River’s Eye
Re: Numbers
David Weiss (of the MacBU) in his blog:
Allowing anyone to read and write your file format is a bold move because it says in essence, “We don’t need a locked down file format to compete. The format can be available for everyone, and we’ll compete on the ease of use and efficiency of our applications. We have what we think is the best interface for reading, creating and managing Office documents, but if someone has what they think is a better way to build Office documents, wonderful, we welcome it!”
What Apple has done with Keynote, Pages and Numbers is exactly this.
The idea that, in 2007, opening up your file format is “bold,” and that you are “allowing” other programs to read and write your format, is frankly offensive. It implies that your default position is that my data belongs to you to exploit as a competitive advantage.
Cool photo
Check out this picture of a mouse atop a frog, staying out of floodwaters.
Narnia has never sat right with me
From some random forum post via Diane Duane:
Aslan is what Jesus would have been if the Bible had been written by an American. After his “sacrifice”, he comes back with a huge army and bites his enemy’s fucking head off. Much cooler.
Zen Baking Soda
So putting a container of baking soda in the fridge to combat odors is hardly anything new, but I had a small inspiration about it when I was moving in here, and I’ve kept it up when I’ve changed the baking soda since then.
On sleep
I had a bit of an epiphany about sleep today.
I was reading a bit from the Wikibook about Lucid Dreaming, and came across this passage in the section on Wake Initiation of Lucid Dreams:
If you pay attention to your physical body while using these techniques, then you will likely enter sleep paralysis without losing conscious awareness of your body. You will get a tingling and buzzing sensation (this might be unpleasant). These sensations might be so strong that you feel that you will die (e.g., you might feel a choking sensation), but don’t worry, this is perfectly safe! Sometimes you can simply wait until you fall asleep straight into a lucid dream. However, if you don’t fall asleep, and you become completely paralysed (with the exception of your eyes), don’t try to move.
Reading this explanation of what it feels like to fall asleep, wondering why they were treating it so gingerly, it hit me: this is not normal. Most people have already lost consciousness when this happens. When people talk about drifting peacefully off to sleep, they’re not just talking about mental peace, they’re actually mentally asleep before the physical discomfort of the sleeping state sets in.
I never really realized that.
It makes sense, and now that I think about it, sometimes I go to sleep that way too; just not often enough for it to really define the experience for me. Most nights, I feel that loss of control, and frankly it’s not fun.
This gives me a completely different outlook on people who like sleep, a claim I’ve always been just a bit dubious of. Even though it has useful effects, I’ve never really quite believed, deep down, anyone who said they liked the process of sleep. But if they’re not really experiencing that loss of control; if the process of becoming unconscious happens in more subtle ways most or all of the time, it begins to make sense.
Stealth holiday
So I walk up to the door of the preschool, child’s hand in mine, already planning out my busy day in my head.
The door is locked.
Slightly belatedly, I read the sign on the door; the one that’s been there for at least a week, cheerfully telling me that they’re closed for Martin Luther King’s Birthday (Observed).
It’s not the first time I’d read that sign, I just hadn’t put it together this morning. Maybe I should have had that hollow, soulless coffee this morning after all.
Red Herring
Went to a reader’s theater last night in Blaine. Fun little play, called Red Herring — spies, communists and fish; what more could you want from a script? Cute as a button.
I went with my friend Lea; one of her friends was in the play, and said friend apparently wanted to meet me; so I joined a few of the players and Lea for the post-reading hang-out at Denny’s. Good times were had by all.
Unrelated: I tried to make cookies tonight. Failed totally at cookies; they poofed up like pancakes. Yummy, though: butterscotch, white chocolate, dark chocolate and marshmallows. I’ll try again later in the week and see if I can keep them to cookie-like consistency. If I get the recipe figured out, I owe a plate of cookies to a friend…
It’s the sweater
This picture is freakin’ adorable.
Coffee
Hi, Coffee.
How’s it going?
Oh. Sorry to hear that. The thing is, we need to talk. Yeah, like that.
I just don’t know what our relationship is anymore, Coffee. I’ve gotten lost somewhere in that triangle between pleasure, tool and addiction.
I used to enjoy you. I mean really enjoy you; savor, even. You were a delightful sensation. You were complex, you had a distinct and unmistakable aroma, you were warm and comforting.
Then, as sleep deprivation became more normal (parenthood’ll do that to you every time), you were such a useful tool. You’re good for the brain sometimes, Coffee, I’ll vouch for that and so will science. You can banish the mental fog of nighttime; you can bring clarity to the most distant of thoughts. Coffee, you ushered in the Age of Reason, and I thank you for it.
But this morning as I boil the water, as I dutifully scoop you into the press, something is missing. It’s not a ritual, it’s an empty gesture. I am numb this morning, and I am dull, and I am starting to climb out of numbness and dullness enough to realize it.
I respect you, Coffee, that’s the thing. I love you, and I always will. I haven’t been treating you as something worthy of respect recently, and that’s sad.
That’s why I think we should become just friends. I don’t want to give you up, but I don’t think you’ll be such a constant companion any more. Not for a while, at least.
This morning, I’m making coffee on a Saturday morning. I have some time, and I’m going to damn well make it a ritual. I’m going to inhale deeply before I drink. I’m going to steep the grounds for just the right amount of time. I’m going to do right by you, Coffee. You deserve that.
Monday morning, I might just leave you on the counter. But wouldn’t you prefer it that way, rather than just going through the motions?
“Avoid fava beans.”
Apparently Pythagoras suggested that people avoid fava beans, and nobody knew why. Aristotle wasn’t sure, but figured he’d cover all his bases by suggesting that perhaps Pythagoras didn’t like them “either because they have the shape of testicles, or because they resemble the gates of hell, for they alone have no hinges, or again because they spoil, or because they resemble the nature of the universe, or because of oligarchy, for they are used for drawing lots.” (Source: this article, cause I believe everything I read on the Internet.)
Visiting Mum
I remember being rather horrified one summer morning long ago when a burly, cheerful labouring man, carrying a hoe and a watering pot came into our churchyard and, as he pulled the gate behind him, shouted over his shoulder to two friends, ‘See you later, I’m just going to visit Mum.’ He meant he was going to weed and water and generally tidy up her grave. It horrified me because this mode of sentiment, all this churchyard stuff, was and is simply hateful, even inconceivable, to me. [But] I am beginning to wonder whether, if one could take that man’s line (I can’t), there isn’t a good deal to be said for it. That was his symbol for her, his link with her. Caring for it was visiting her. May this not be in one way better than preserving an image in one’s own memory? The grave and the image are equally links with the irrecoverable and symbols for the unimaginable. But the image has the added disadvantage that it will do whatever you want. It will smile or frown, be tender, gay, ribald, or argumentative just as your mood demands. It is a puppet of which you hold the strings… The flower-bed on the other hand is an obstinant, resistant, often intractable bit of reality. —C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed
Tomorrow’s Thanksgiving Day, which I’ve always found interesting. It’s a useful reminder, isn’t it, this idea of taking time aside to be grateful?
This year, I am thankful for remembering. I am thankful for that peculiar and very human quality of life — that our experience changes us; for the fact that none of us will be the same people on this day next year.
Until next Thanksgiving, here’s to another year of obstinant, resistant, often intractable reality. Here’s hoping it brings us all more life than death, more to remember than to forget. Wassails!
99
I’ve always enjoyed the fact that you can set microwaves to double-digit values higher than 60. You can put something in for 99 seconds, and get virtually 1:40 worth of irradiation while only having to press two digits. It feels like cheating the system or something. (Even more fun is nuking something for, say, 1:90. Now that twists the mind around. I fully expect to eventually discover that some mid-80s sci-fi show used this as a critical plot point to confuse an android or something.)
Sleeping cutie
I love the spiky hair.
-archy
I like having the track “Germaine” from Sinéad O’Connor’s Universal Mother album in random playlists, becuase it’s interesting to juxtapose it against whatever may follow it. It’s a brief spoken segment by Germaine Greer, and it serves as in intro to Sinéad’s album. (It came up twice tonight in my iTunes shuffle, once preceding This Town is Wrong and once preceding The Three Great Stimulants.)
I do think that women could make politics irrelevant; by a kind of spontaneous cooperative action the like of which we have never seen; which is so far from people’s ideas of state structure or viable social structure that it seems to them like total anarchy — when what it really is, is very subtle forms of interrelation that do not follow some heirarchal pattern which is fundamentally patriarchal. The opposite to patriarchy is not matriarchy but fraternity, yet I think it’s women who are going to have to break this spiral of power and find the trick of cooperation.
— Germaine Greer
I actually frequently quote a part of this out of context, and I feel it’s “only slightly” misrepresentational. It can be hard to explain being a feminist white male, and when I need to reduce it to a sound bite, I cull this sentence:
The opposite to patriarchy is not matriarchy but fraternity.
— Germaine Greer
