Tag Archives: random

How it is, and how it ought to be

For the first time in … well, who can remember? … I’ve arrived at Friday and thought that it would be nice if there were a few more work days this week. Is it Friday *already*?

The amount of work that needs to be done is staggering. It could very easily get overwhelming, and allow me to become “Frozen in the moment – the lack of imagination Between how it is and how it ought to be” (“How it is”, Rush, Vapor Trails) But I have a pretty good glimpse of how it ought to be, or at least how I think it ought to be.

Dremel pumpkin carving

Inspired by the Dremel tool featured on Slashdot and armed by a complete lack of common sense, I went to Lowe’s to get a Dremel. I learned a number of things.

1) The people at Lowe’s are only marginally aware of Teh IntarWeb, and are completely unaware that their site was featured on a geek website. And they don’t actually have any of the fancy orange dremels in stock. But the regular MiniMite is pretty much the same thing, except that it comes with more bits.

2) The Dremel tool, although terrible at carving, is very good at shaving. That’s where you scoop the pumpkin very thin – perhaps a half inch or less thick – and then shave away the outer skin of the pumpkin to allow some light through. It is also very efficient at covering yourself and everything in a 4 foot radius with a fine mist of pumpkin. Do not attempt this indoors. You have been warned.

3) Chris still has all of my carving tools.

4) The battery doesn’t last very long. Presumably it lasts longer if permitted to attain a full charge, but I really really wanted to get started. So I don’t actually have a finished product that I can take pictures of and show you. Nor will I show you pictures of everything covered in an orange paste. That was unpleasant.

5) When you get those really cool ideas (“Hey, wouldn’t it be cool to work on pumpkins with a Dremel tool!”) you should go with it, rather than waiting for someone else to come out with a product 6 years later. In fact, we talked about this for the zillionth time at our pumpkin carving party on Sunday night. Those silly things you think to invent, someone else will invent and market while you’re thinking how cool it would be.

Ok, pictures later, if I actually get this done tomorrow. Don’t expect great things. But prices on pumpkins should come down next week, and then I’ll get a little more practice.

Small photographers, and living in an immaterial world

Ted mentioned today that he’ll be participating in DaddyCon while his wife is off presenting at a conference. Then he linked to a gallery of photos by his kids. Wow, Ted, what a great idea, and what a great perspective kids have. *Definitely* going to let my little person take more pictures.

Also, on the subject of small people, my Sarah made an interesting remark last night, which was a bit enlightening. I often sit with her while she’s falling asleep, and usually I’m working on my laptop, and often talking with folks on IRC. Last night, I was playing solitaire on my Palm. Sarah asked if I was playing alone, or with someone else. And, of course, by the time she has a computer, or a Palm, or whatever we’re using in 5 or 6 years, *everything* will probably be online all the time, wirelessly, so that makes sense for the world that she will live in. Presumably many of you already live there, with your PDA/Phone/Pager/Thingies. I’ve resisted that thus far, and not purely for financial reasons, although that’s part of it.

Being online all the time changes how we think about things, how we interact with people, and a lot of other things. Of course we don’t really know much about these changes, it being a very new phenomenon. One example, however, was brought to mind again this morning. Because I spend a lot of time on IRC, I’ve come to rely on the IRC bots. They store little tidbits of information so that I don’t have to. I rely on rosie for phone numbers and email addresses. I rely on fajita for Apache documentation, and the answers to frequently asked questions. I rely on Monty to … um … well, to be Monty. (If you don’t know Monty, no description is adequate, and if you do, none is necessary.)

So the strange consequence of this is that when I’m *not* online, I really want rosie’s help. She knows things that I don’t know, and would rather not have to look up. Of course, there are already folks who talk to their IRC bots by cell phone, or on their wireless PDAs, and I suppose I’m not far away from that. What I’d really like to do (and I hear it’s been done) is to hook up Sphinx and Festival, along with strategically placed microphones and speakers, so that I can speak to Rosie and Fajita as I move around my home.

Or, maybe that’s just a little too weird.

Ghyll

Morbus Iff has created a game called Ghyll which is a kind of fictional Wikipedia. The degree to which people have gotten into the game in the short time it has been running is absolutely amazing.

Fellow Kenyan

This afternoon at Walmart, I saw someone with a Turtle Bay tshirt, and I asked him if he was from Kenya. This resulted in me getting a big bear hug from a complete stranger, because he had not met anyone from Kenya for many months. He said that he was “one and a half years old in this country”, which I find to be a wonderful way to express it. I could not immediately tell what tribe he was – I guess I’ve been away from Kenya for too long – but he said that he was from Nairobi too. And then we went our separate ways. Things to do, places to go. I wish I had time to sit down with him and have some chai and talk.

Feedback

I’ve been listening to Feedback. It’s a collection of the songs that Rush grew up on. Highly recommended. Particularly if, like me, you grew up on Rush without the benefit of hearing what they grew up on. Summertime Blues and The Seeker are are the two songs that Rush did at the concert that I went to. Also great is the track Heart full of Soul.

And, while I’m on the topic of Rush, I have an admission to make. I always used to think of Alex Lifeson as that other guy in Rush. After seeing him play the guitar, I can never again think that. Watching his fingers move on the strings was like watching some kind of dance. He had about a dozen different guitars, and used a different one for different songs. And he’s truly an artist.

And, of course, the ad-lib rambling during Strangiatto was … surreal. He told a odd little story sounded like a dream sequence. Something about a goat driving the tour bus. “How does a goat know how to drive? And where’s the sheep?” When they were leaving the concert arena, the goat had all of the receipts. “What was the goat doing with the receipts? For that matter, where does a goat keep receipts? I know. Do you?”

There’s a hint of this on “Rush in Rio”, but you can’t really tell what he’s saying. It was very odd, but oddly funny.

Anywhere but here

Where would you rather be?
Anywhere but here
When will the time be right?
Anytime but now

(Double Agent – Rush – Counterparts)

When you look at me suddenly it’s clear
You’re burning up my dreams
Crazy as it seems
I don’t wanna be anywhere but here
Anywhere but here

(Anywhere but here – Hilary Duff – Metamorphosis)

So book me on a plane for Paris
Or on a cruise to a desert isle
Anywhere but here where love disappeared
Anywhere but here
I wanna party in New York City
And climb over the China Wall
Anywhere but where your love disapeared
Anywhere but here

(Anywhere but here – Eden’s Crush)

You’ll always be with me, always be with me
Part of my heart for all time
Where I’m going , you’re going
Even if it’s just in my mind
Leaving’s not leaving
I’m not leaving you behind

(Anywhere but here – LeAnn Rimes)

(California is gonna be the place for me.)
Oh leave it all to disappear. I’m heading anywhere but here.
Because I want a life, a souvenir.
I’ll find it anywhere but here.

(Anywhere but here – KD Lang)

No, there wasn’t a point. Except that it seems that only a teenage girl wants to stay right where she is. I don’t expect there’s any deep message in that.

Done with migration

Ok, I think I’m all done with the migration from Movable Type to WordPress. Took rather longer than advertised, but I’m mostly satisfied with the results. I think that, visually, it looks terrible, so I’ll have to get someone with CSS fu to do something about that for me. But the software itself is surprisingly slick, and fast. I’m pleased.

I was going to try to contribute some of my experience back to the documentation project, and may still do so. But the documentation appears to be largely in Wiki, and, despite my best efforts, many Wikis continue to baffle me, when folks try to use them as a primary documentation repository. It works for some folks, but so often it just doesn’t. Since my long-term goals include contributing to the docs on a number of projects that use Wiki as the docs engine, I need to get over this. So WP seems a friendlier place than some to get started on this effort. Maybe next week.