None of the Above

[ animals beauty ] 2002-06-23
If I were a gozillionaire: I would buy this horse and learn to ride him, and treat him well all of his days.

Dang, I'd better hurry up and become a gozillionaire, so I can afford such things. Alas, someone else will probably buy him first. I hope they treat him well.

[ beauty design ] 2002-04-14
My crayons arrived! I won the eBay auction for the Crayola Color Mix-Up crayons that I mentioned before in my log. They arrived a couple days ago.

I made a sample sheet of all the colors, and created a crayon page on my website that shows what they look like.

My crayon collection is slowly growing...

And you can be sure that I carefully keep mine separate from Elena's!

[ beauty music ] 2002-03-27
Cool little movie: Daniel sent me a link to this spiffy movie (local mirror) that I call "Anthem for the Atari Generation".

It's got lots of kookie low-res graphics and really neat music all created with simple beeps and so on. Brought back lots of fond memories for me. :)

[ beauty design ] 2002-03-23
I may never leave the house again: Oh my. While trying to find a particular tessellation I remember seeing on the web a couple years ago (still looking, btw), I stumbled across the java-powered Kali tool, which lets you explore various plane symmetries. It's amazing - you just click a few times and create beguiling symmetrical patterns.

And of course, the site it's on, the JAVA Gallery of Interactive On-Line Geometry, has lots of other fun tools to explore that I haven't even touched yet. Wow!

[ beauty ] 2002-03-23
Regular Easter eggs not exciting enough for you? Then try your hand at making Ukrainian Easter eggs (pysanky).

These things are gorgeous - even the beginner designs look extraordinary compared to what you can create with a Paas kit. Wow.

I'll add this to my personal list of Cool Artistic Things I Want To Do Before I Die.

If you, like me, think this is cool but don't have the time to get into it this year, then you (& your kids) can try out the site creator's pysanky coloring book. I think I'll print out some of these designs and have at 'em with my new crayons...

[ beauty mammalog ] 2002-01-15
My beauty:  Our friend Luba's daughter Clavdia took some remarkable pictures of Elena. Here's my favorite:

(click for a bigger version)

I look at this picture and I am utterly amazed that such a creature emerged from my own body.

Damn, we live in a wondrous universe.

[ beauty consume ] 2001-12-10
Hey look, my dad founded the internet!  Well, okay, not really. Just a guy with the same name (well, *almost* the same - my dad has a different middle initial). Pretty interesting, I suppose.

I came to that page from a page at thinkgeek with posters of the early internet that Daniel pointed me to.

I wandered around there and found this cool button that says "90% of being smart is knowing what you're dumb at". I like that. I also like this cool perl sticker. I'm not sure what I would stick it on if I had one, however. Maybe my car? I am a little wary, since my car has never had anything stuck on it before.

Well... not on the outside, anyway. It's just got my little clingy Colorado School of Mines emblem on the inside back windshield.

And then there's my American flag...

Let me tell you about my American flag. It's the coolest flag in the known universe. It lays flat on the horizontal surface behind the back seats. It's made of this corrugated plastic stuff, and it's got the traditional red stripes and blue field, but the parts that are usually white are this reflective silvery stuff that they have on holographic stickers. What this means is that when the sun hits it, it reflects really beautiful colors.

It's hard to describe, but it's gorgeous. I'll be driving along and notice that it's reflecting, say, deep green ranging to blue. Then I'll turn right and it'll shift towards red and orange. I'll turn left and it'll go through blue and green and all the way over to purple. It's just plain lovely.

It was sort of an accident how it came to be in the position where I could see the colors. I originally had it propped up with some beanie babies that someone gave me, so that it could be seen through the window. Then Elena saw the beanie babies and grabbed them. It turned out perfectly, I think. :)

[ beauty mammalog ] 2001-08-28
Two pix for you:  First, we have Elena on her Daddy's lap after a bath:

And my plumeria featuring several lovely blooms at once:

Enjoy.

[ beauty good ] 2001-08-20
Hip hip hooray! It finally bloomed!  That is, my little plumeria tree finally infloresced, after several months' long wait. I was worried that it would bloom while I was in California visiting my sister, and that I'd miss it, but I was truly fortunate instead.

When I got back from my trip, it had two blossoms all ready to unfurl. They took a couple of days to carefully open. It was a bit like Christmas since I had no idea what color they'd be. It turns out they're white with yellow on the front, and the petals have a pale pink stripe along the back edge.

So, behold the first two blossoms in their glory.

Even before they opened fully, I could smell their scent - a delicious lemony-peachy fragrance that makes roses seem ordinary.

About five more are ready to open soon, and I'll take more pictures as they unfold.

I'm just so, so happy that this is happening. Plumerias are my absolute favorite when it comes to flowers, and I've wanted to have one ever since I left Hawaii (in 1995). :)

[ beauty music ] 2001-07-21
Strange connections sometimes appear:  when you aren't expecting them, but if you pay attention, you can catch when they're happening.

One I experienced recently was this: I heard a song I'd never heard before on the radio, and I kind of liked it, and as the song went on it sounded relentlessly familiar, in a way.

As it played, different instruments were emphasized in turn, and I realized that the sounds were all from the music program Noodle, which I had played with a few times (and thought was really cool/funky).

"Whoa", says I, "that's cool that a song made with a program like that made it on the radio". Well, I paid attention when they said what group did the song - it's the Afro Celt Sound System. Their song "When I'm Falling" is big right now (Peter Gabriel sings on it).

So anyway, I looked it up and of course on the Noodle page it lays everything all out - they created Noodle and included it on their second cd. The song I heard on the radio is #2 on their first cd.

So, it's all linked, and if I hadn't recognized the song on the radio, I wouldn't have known at all. I remember how the smile slowly spread across my face as recognition of each sound pattern sunk in. It was just a very cool experience.

So I suggest: play with the Noodle program, then listen to the sample of the song. If that sort of thing sounds interesting to you...

[ beauty ] 2001-06-26
This project looks cool:  Twenty things: twenty people make twenty things in twenty days and swap them. Sounds like what they used to call an "apa" back when I used to read Factsheet Five and dreams of zines filled my head.

I like the very thought of it - art, person-to-person. Looking at some of the sample ones, like Jessamyn's contribution, I'm rather amazed. (learned about this from Caterina's blog)

[ beauty books ] 2001-06-25
Underwater gorgeousness:  is what Daniel tells me this book is all about. It's got a hella long title, though: "Water Light Time : Beneath the Surface, Sea of Light, Cool Waters, Rhythm & Dance, Dark Blue, Water Gardens, Desert Ocean, South Light, Island Kingdom".

On a whim, I just did a search for the word "obidos", which appears in just about every Amazon book-specific url (like the one above). Imagine my surprise when Google showed a mere 78 hits. Hmm. Odd. I wonder what it means? Anyone who has a theory, put it in the box o doom there at the left, and let me know.

[ beauty food ] 2001-06-18
Wild grapes are yummy:  even if they aren't quite ripe. I took a picture of the ones at the park the last time I went there on a walk.

It's amazing to see how the grape vines totally cover the whole tree, intertwining with its branches (and with other grape vines).

I don't know if eventually the grape vines will harm or kill the tree, or if they end up in some kind of reasonable equilibrium, or not. Hmm.

[ beauty ] 2001-06-07
For the record:  the sunset last night was tremendously beautiful. I lack the words to adequately describe it, but it burned impossibly long with this purplish-orange fire all during my way back home after visiting Elena.

And then, after the sun had finally gone down, I went to go water my plumeria plant on the back porch and I saw the gorgeous afterglow in redder tones reflecting off the clouds.

At least the sunsets aren't broken, even if my mental outlook is.

[ beauty mental ] 2001-06-01
Ahh, the view  from Mars's balcony in Seattle was quite lovely, and I happened to capture it with my digicam (though I didn't get many other pix while there).

And here's a lovely one of me enjoying some leftovers:

Note the three prescriptions prominently featured on the countertop next to me. I'm turning into a real pharmacopia (poeia?) lately. I thought only *old* people had to be on this many medications, har har. Okay, it's not really a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but it is to *me*, and my job is to spew forth my own viewpoint I guess. I'm being too navel-gazatory right now about this whole thing, egads.

The point being that today I walked away from my psych appointment with yet more free samples of drugs. Since my nasty awful rash (*serious* all-over-body itching) has been attributed to zyprexa, we're switching to risperdal as the antipsychotic member of our pharmacological team. So I got samples of those as well as (of course) more prozac.

And we're upping my dosage of depakote. Yesterday I got two prescriptions, too - one to help reduce the itching, and an antibacterial cream to treat the areas of my skin that have gotten infected from too much itching. Am I putting you to sleep yet?

Lately, I'm having crappy mornings and halfway okay afternoons. Tonight was pretty good, and I feel good now. It makes me want to stay up late to feel as though I've gotten a decent day in...

I actually got to see my roommate Chris today for more than the usual five minutes - he got home early (eight something) and cajoled me into walking to Dairy Queen with him, where he bought me a Peanut Buster Parfait. Hey, how can a girl refuse such a lovely offer?

Still, I'm worried about gaining huge amounts of weight back. I was thrilled to get down as far as I did (somewhere nebulous between 165 and 170), and I'm not eager to regain it. I have been feeling really seriously huge cravings lately, mostly for salty crunchy carb-filled food, so I've really gotta watch it.

It sucks having my mental balance thrown off repeatedly. That pretty much sums up most of my whining in the "mental" category here.

Lately I have sunk really low in the first part of the day, not even being able to get out of bed much. But it helps if I have an appointment or something that forces me to get out of the house and be around people. Tomorrow, I'm using the occasion of going to see my mother as an excuse to get my butt up and out of bed.

She's in San Antonio for a conference or something, and I'm going to head down there and meet her for lunch and spend the night down there, then we'll come back together on Saturday and she'll get to see Elena.

(aside to self: how on earth can people possibly be interested in reading all the mundane details of my life? uh oh, I'm starting to notice my audience. alert! alert! oh crap, better forget about it and just spew mindlessly again)

I had a good visit with Elena the other night. We dipped granola bars in milk together, and I gave her a bath. She only got *one* bucketful of water dumped out on the floor! Woo hoo, cheers for Beth!

Oh no, the risperdal is starting to take effect. These antipsychotics, they don't fuck around - they go right to your eyelids and start rolling them down without your consent. Ever had a big dose of benadryl and felt that sweet lulling antihistamine sleepiness? This is *stronger* (and not nearly so sweet and lilting).

I want to read some weblogs before I crash, so I'd better hurry. Dagnabbit. I took a bath tonight, it felt good. I noticed that the edges of my fingernails are all shiny from all the scratching I've been doing - the scratching is starting to hurt instead of just feel... well, itch-reducing.

Okay, enough spew for one night. One o these days I'll split off the journal-oid stuff separately from the webloggy stuff. Really. Maybe.

[ beauty ] 2001-05-16
My bowl came out really well:  This would be the bowl I made when Daniel and I went to the Ceramic Mug during his visit here. Below are two views of it (click for a bigger image):

I use it to put my jewelry in when I go to bed.

I'm quite proud of how it came out, plus the fact that I was able to settle on a neat design quickly and carry it through just the way I wanted to. :)

[ beauty ] 2001-05-10
Myst III is gorgeous:  And it's fun so far, too. I have only played for one evening while Mars was visiting, so far.

We got through one puzzle (beautiful and ingenious, of course), but then we got sort of stuck, or too tired to continue, take your pick.

With the Myst games, I've always had to cheat and look at on-line hints to be able to win. I hope I don't have to this time, but I think it's likely. Ah, well. As long as I enjoy the experience of playing the game...

[ beauty ] 2001-05-07
One from the vaults, part one:  One of the great benefits of going through your old stuff is finding things that you'd thought were lost forever...

And so it was with this photo of a crow:

click for a larger version.

This was probably taken by my father, likely sometime in the sixties. I set it aside years ago when I was going through old pictures, and I sorely missed it when I wasn't able to find it again. The other day, it magically reappeared inside an envelope inside another envelope inside a box of old papers that I finally went through. (I put off going through those papers because it was, as I feared, heart-wrenching in various ways).

This crow may figure prominently in the redesign of my weblog (forthcoming whenever I feel like it)... then again, it may not.

[ beauty ] 2001-05-07
Alphonse Mucha was a great painter:  who I had never heard of, until recently, when Mars mentioned he bought a poster of Mucha's work "Gismonda".

Mucha's other work is just gorgeous, too, and it's nice to occasionally discover wonderful new (to me) artists - there are some other promising ones for me to check out at that site, too. It even includes some of Maxfield Parrish's work - I've admired his paintings for a long time.

[ beauty books good ] 2001-05-04
Hey, how come I don't have a category for music?  Geez, that's quite an oversight... Anyway, last night I had the first guitar lesson of my life, and it was *extremely* cool. I got there late (bs traffic), but all was cool once I arrived. I was even feeling a bit bad by the time I arrived, my most-of-the-day good mood having finally dissipated, but once we got started and started talking, I felt much better. :)

My teacher is Scott (aka VanDweller), a brilliant fellow with whom I've been exchanging email for many months now. He lives on his own land near (in?) Wimberley, in a big blue van. Scott also makes guitars, and works in the music shop, among other things.

He's (quite) a bit further down the Path than I am, and gracious enough to assist me along in my journey. He's been a great source of wisdom for me, and now I get to learn music from him, too!

I got a copy of his book when I saw him, and one of his cd's too (which I'm listening to now, and it's *great*!). We talked for a long time after the lesson (well okay, before/during/after), and then went out to a big truck stop on I-35 to have really huge delicious omelettes. It was a wonderful evening, and I got home exhausted and fell right into bed.

I've got a lot of cool new stuff to learn before my next lesson. It's nice to know that I have something so enjoyable to do now, an additional coping strategy when I'm feeling frazzled or down or panicky...

[ beauty ] 2001-05-02
Ooo, pretty functions!  Reading Kottke today, which I basically never do, came across this little bitty web page which has gorgeous little animations of funky functions. Sort of hypnotic to watch them oscillate around.

[ beauty ] 2001-05-02
Wow, what a quilt!  Via genehack, which I'm catching up on, is this amazing array of quilt square designs generated with perl, and the real-world manifestation of it. I am awestruck...

[ beauty ] 2001-05-01
Symbols with odd symmetry:  are something I really enjoy. I happened upon one very interesting one when catching up on reading David Chess's log. He linked to The Laboratorium, and I wandered to a piece there that has a cool symbol in its upper-left corner. Go check it out if you're into that kind of thing, or if you want to read what the piece is about (a humorous mission log from the International Space Station).

I used to make all kinds of odd symbols for fun, (and still do from time to time) and most of them that I settled on ended up with odd symmetry once I had refined them. I'll scan 'em one o these years...

Oh, that reminds me, Mars Saxman has an absolutely delicious oddly-symmetrical symbol at the bottom of his weblog. I saw that one and immediately loved it and coveted it. Luckily for me, he was gracious enough to let me co-opt it for my business cards.

[ beauty mammalog ] 2001-04-22
Grabbed a frame:  from the video that I'm editing. I just liked this look of Elena, pausing by a pond:

Click the pic for a bigger version.

I'm busily editing more video, honing my skills with my tools. This is somewhat of a fun stage, really. And yes, I promise I will *not* make a video using every kind of cheesy effect and transition. Dissolve works just fine for me. I also promise that I won't use bouncing titles. Really.

[ beauty books ] 2001-04-22
This autistic artist has incredible vision:  I happened across this illustration of the work of an autistic artist in the New Yorker:

It just struck me immediately with its beauty, so here I share it with you. The artist's name is Jessy Park, and her mother has written a book about her, which looks quite intriguing...

[ beauty ] 2001-04-13
Saw some pretty wildflowers today:  when Spencer and I drove down to the wildflower center to try to get Elena to sleep.

Enjoy!

[ beauty ] 2001-04-09
I built a sand pendulum:  and it's pretty spiffy. It's difficult to see the pattern in the sand, though, unless the light is relatively low, but that's okay. I like it a lot. It's sort of meditative to watch the thing.

Yes, that's a frisbee that the sand is in.

I'll write more about it later - right now I'm exhausted, I'm going to watch some tv and then go to bed early, I think.

[ beauty ] 2001-04-04
I'm wearing more jewelry now  and I think it's part of my transformation-thingie that I've got going on now. I like it very much, actually.

I'm wearing two rings, one on each hand (but on different fingers), and two bracelets, and a necklace.

This is so unlike me. Well, unlike the *old* me. Now I'm the *new* me, so it is like me.

[ beauty ] 2001-03-26
Two pretty things:  to try to drive these blues away...

• Sand pendulum art from the Seattle earthquake
• A very nice desk, which I coveted immediately once I saw it.

Props to those who sent me these links: Mars, Daniel, and Leslie from work. It did cheer me up a bit to have nice things to look at.

[ beauty canoe ] 2001-03-08
Bluebonnets are up:  Well, a few of them, anyway. I took a picture of them this morning on the way to work (the building I work in is just to the left of the light pole in the middle of the picture).

Elena and I went to the park the other day:

She is wearing her Buzz Lightyear t-shirt in the picture, if you must know. She *loves* Buzz Lightyear. For some reason the powers that be decided that such t-shirts should be in the "boys" section, but I don't think that kind of fun should be kept from little girls. :)

We hear rumors that snow sometimes falls this time of year, but as you can see from the picture, that's nonsense. The weather is clearly nice.

Well, it was, that day. Today we have rain. I hope it's nice on Saturday, because I hope to go canoeing then. I'm trying to see if some weblogging types from sxsw would like to join me. Could be fun!

[ beauty ] 2001-02-27
Wicked cool!  Daniel pointed me to this APOD pic of a tree's shadow during a partial solar eclipse.

Totally wild - all the small holes in and between the leaves acted as pinhole lenses, casting crescent-shaped sun images on the ground.

I know what I'll be looking for the next time I get to see a solar eclipse...

[ beauty ] 2001-02-14
Oooh, pretty!  I made some Julia set fractals this morning, and uploaded a few. They're kinda blurry, but oh well. Go take a look, if you like.

[ beauty ] 2001-02-13
Foggy today:  I took a pic, see below. Sorry about the glare. You can see a vague reflection of me holding the camera at the left. Also notice that all the trees are in straight rows. This is one of the big things I hate about this IBM facility. Anyway:

It was quite beautiful this morning, especially in my neighborhood, where the trees arched above the narrow streets. I think the word is "ethereal".

[ beauty canoe ] 2001-02-06
Time to get wistful:  Just for a little bit. When I was looking for a pic of Waimea for the previous entry, I came across some sites with good pix of other Hawaiian beaches, so I just have to link and share a little more.

• Ali'i Beach Park - this is near where my canoe club is located. Well, it's no longer my canoe club, but it's still there.
• Ka'ena Point - I went on hikes here by myself several times, to the only corner of Oahu that can't be reached by car. I took my binoculars (huge old ones that were my grandmother's - she bought them with the money she won on a Daily Double at the horse track) and spied a few humpback whales breaching offshore, tiny in the distance. I remember how my skin was covered with salt when I came back, because the huge waves crashing on the rocks released so much salty mist into the air. The pictures above are of the other side, where there's a beach. I always made my approach from the North, so I never saw that side, except when I got to the Point itself and looked around.
• Pokai Bay - this is where we'd go bodyboarding and snorkeling, and it's where I had my first outrigger canoe ride, that changed my life forever. For the better. This place will always be special to me. I think it's my favorite beach.
• Waikiki - the outrigger race here was the only one in which my team won a medal. We weren't very good (we usually finished close to last), but on that day we managed to catch a wave at just the right time, and we came in second! I still have the little medal.
• Ma'ili - on the day of our race here, the jellyfish were out, and one of the women on my team got stung on the way out of the boat. She was all right, though. I spent the rest of the day swimming in the water during the other races, and I never got stung. And I found a dollar bill floating in the water. After verifying that it didn't belong to anyone within the sound of my voice, I kept it. I guess it was my lucky day!

There's more... I'll scan some pix of me at some beaches at some point, including a picture of myself in the Toilet Bowl! Muahahaha! It's not what you think...

[ atheism beauty mammalog ] 2001-01-31
Sometimes, I'm jealous of Catholics:  even though I'm an atheist. There's something about the majesty of all the symbolism, the Latin incantations, and so on, that I wish I could be a part of. I could never believe in their views of God and Jesus and so forth, though. And I could never be part of an organization that has done certain things that the Catholic church has done (the Inquisition, persecution of Galileo for telling the truth and waiting until the late 20th century to pardon him, and forbidding their members to use birth control, among just a few of the things I object strongly to).

But still, sometimes I wish I could participate in something that had some of the positive aspects of Catholicism. This LACTNET message is one example that illustrates what I'm getting at.

[ beauty mammalog ] 2001-01-27
She looked happy:  When she was up & about, before the last round of gastrointestinal disturbance:

And now she's sleeping, well, like a baby, recovering:

[ beauty ] 2001-01-19
A place that's holy to me:  is the Memorial Amphitheatre at Arlington National Cemetary. I have been there only once, but I was overwhelmed with how gorgeous it is. It's right behind/in front of (depending on your perspective) the Tomb of the Unknowns. Here's an aerial photograph:

As you can see, it's round. The seats are marble benches. According to the web page, the marble it's made of is Vermont-quarried Danby marble. I know that the marble for the Tomb itself (at the time, in 1931, it was the largest single piece of marble ever quarried in the United States, at 56 tons) was quarried at the Yule quarry in Marble, Colorado (a place I've visited once as well).

The stone there is gorgeously white, small-grained, and veined with gray. It rivals some of the best Italian statuary marble. I have a pic of myself somewhere at home standing next to a huge block of it at the quarry, on a slope with other huge blocks above. By "huge", I mean 4-6 feet on a side, or larger.

More on the Tomb stone: I read that they originally cut a large solid piece for the Tomb, and then realized after sending it on its way that it had a crack (or maybe it developed the crack on the journey). So they went to cut another piece, but just in case, they actually cut two. One was sent and arrived just fine. The other was lost for years and years, until the quarry re-opened (it had been closed since 1941 and reopened in 1990). At a reunion gathering of the old quarry workers, they were talking about this missing stone. One of the workers knew where it was - he pointed to a hole in the wall of the quarry vault, way up high. When the hole was made and the third Tomb stone was deposited in it, it was at the ground level of the vault (in 1931). After that, they had quarried a lot more stone (until 1941), so the floor level gradually descended.

To check if the stone was really still there, they sent climbers up to check. Sure enough, it was! And the interesting thing is that it will remain there forever - there's no way to get it out. There wouldn't be much point to it, either - it would be far easier to just cut another new one, if you needed such a piece.

Anyway, I liked that story.

I still have lots of pieces of marble I got from the Yule quarry. I hope to carve it into something interesting someday, when I get the time. My favorite piece is about fist-sized, and it's half white, half gray. I have no idea what to make with it, though.

[ beauty ] 2001-01-17
Well, whaddayaknow?  Gee, I just happened across mp3 versions of all the songs on the album Highwired by MacAlias.

How spiffy! Go give a listen, it's great music. I promise. :)

Then go buy the album, because these ladies (the two who are the group, or rather, duo) certainly aren't rich. You will probably have to special order it and wait a couple/few weeks, like I did.

Here are a few words from one of the songs, The Gowden Locks Of Anna, which was written by Robert Burns (as were a couple of the other songs). Keep in mind this is Scots, not English:

Yestreen I had a pint o' wine
A place where body saw na;
Yestreen lay on this breast o' mine
The gowden locks o' Anna
The hungry Jew, in wilderness
Rejoicing ower his manna
Was nithin' tae the hinny bliss
Upon the lips o' Anna

...

The Kirk an' State may join an' tell,
To do sic things I maunna:
The Kirk an' State may go tae Hell,
And I'll gae to my Anna.
She is the sunshine o' my e'e,
Tae live but her I canna;
Had I on earth but wishes three,
The first would be my Anna.

The liner notes say:

Anna Park was a blonde barmaid at The Globe Inn, Dumfries, whith whom Burns spent many a night on his way home from his excise rounds. The Globe is still a good place for a drink, and the room in which they slept looks very much the way it did then, with some genuine Burns graffitti scratched on the window pane. Anna bore him a daughter and was sent off to Edinburgh in disgrace by her family. Despite having a baby son of the same age, Jean Armour, Burns' wife, brought up Anna's child as her own. Gowden Locks is, in our humble opinion, one of Burns' most beautiful love songs.

I would certainly agree it's a gorgeous song, especially the way they sing it.

And this album also features the song John C. Clarke, the most wonderful song ever written about a gas installer. :) I knew I had to have this album the moment I heard that song on the radio. Go listen, it's good. And in the liner notes they say: "Commissions for songs about electricians and software engineers accepted."

Heh, I laughed out loud when I read that... I'd love to hear what kind of song they'd come up with about a software engineer...

[ beauty consume design ] 2001-01-15
I am a total geek:  When I learned that Singer came out with a new sewing machine controlled with a Game Boy (via Girlhacker), I thought it was terrific, since I just so happened to be in the market for one. My old sewing machine is now ten years old, and having served me well, it nevertheless can't do spiffy things like letters and little duckies-inna-row, which are absolutely essential for making cute little outfits for Elena (and for her dollies).

So, me being me, can you guess how long I waited after finding out that the Singer Izek existed that I bought one?

Answer: the next day.

And it's *sweet*! Here's a little taste of what it can do:

That last line is me experimenting with a combination of two different stitches. I have only gotten to play with it for a little while, but already I have a bullet list to share with you:

• You have to have the Game Boy connected to control anything about the stitch. Including the length of it, if you're just doing straight stitch. So it's very important not to lose your Game Boy (or lose track of it, say if someone borrows it to play a game). I can foresee many annoyed seamstresses if their spouses and/or children dare to borrow Mom's Game Boy and not return it to her sewing basket! Heh, what an image!
• There's no manual. The videotape that came with it refers repeatedly to the manual, but there ain't one. There was, though, a very nice inspection slip in the box listing all four items that were included: the machine itself, the Game Boy, the Game Boy cartridge, and the videotape. All were neatly checked off on the list. I dunno why they didn't include a manual. Maybe I'll have to bug Singer about it, but I'm not sure whether there's really much point to it - I would like to have a manual, but I understand everything already even without one. As are most technically-savvy persons of my generation (and of some other generations), I am quite able to figure out new gadgets sans manual. But I still like to pore through them for unsuspected features and so on (and occasionally, I have found them essential, particularly for things with really sparse interfaces, namely my Canon ELPH APS camera).
• When it seizes up and jams, it does so gently. :) I mis-replaced the bobbin-holding thingie, thus causing a thread monstrosity and much "ka-chunk"-ing to emit from the machine, after which point it gracefully decided that I was nuts, refused to keep attempting to run, and gave me a spiffy little error message on the Game Boy screen. That's cool! Graceful failure modes are fabulous...
• In addition to the generous set of patterned stitches that it comes with, I can also do custom ones. I haven't really tried it yet - my first effort was a smiley face that came out all warped because I didn't bother to connect the line segments (well, it wouldn't have been much of a smiley face that way). Look for more intriguing stitches here in the future!
• The speed control (for operation without the foot pedal) has a little turtle at the slow end and a bunny at the fast end. Hahahhaha, I love it! I like the pedal-less operation feature, it's nice to just press the "go" button and have it sew away. Of course, I wouldn't walk away from the machine after doing so, but in theory, you could. Oh, and the go/stop button has little LEDs in it, so it changes from green (when it's a "go" button) to red (when it's a "stop" button). Cool! Saves interface real estate, and it's intuitive signaling.
• The feed dogs don't come up right away after I take off and replace the metal plate thingie. I think it's a machining-tolerance thing. That is, the gap between the feed dogs and their slots is so small, that they can sometimes catch the edge. They do come up after I mess with the lever a bit, though, so it's not a problem. By the way, feed dogs are the thingies that shove the fabric forward as you sew, if you didn't know.
• I'm going to have to get an AC adapter for the Game Boy, or else I'm going to be spending a fortune on batteries. I wish they had included one... I mean, think about it: you've pretty much got to keep the Game Boy on when you're sewing, which can be hours and hours at a stretch. Wait, I could be wrong. You may be able to turn it off after you download your stitch parameters, I'll have to test it out.
• You can save your favorite stitches, including four custom ones, and several strings in the lettering section. Spiffy!
• Overall, the interface is clean, simple, and elegant. Very, very good design. The Game Boy interface is quite intuitive as well. It's about as complex as it needs to be, and no more. Perfect. Except for the fact that every time I have to turn it on, I have to select English - why can't it remember that?
• Oh yeah, it was about $600. Not bad for what it can do. From what I could see, other machines that can do this range of stuff range from $800 to $1000 or more, so I think it's really quite a good buy. It's quite smart to use the Game Boy platform for a lot of the stitch configuration legwork - it allows them to use a tried and tested hardware & software platform rather than reinvent their own onboard the sewing machine (which they've already done, but still...)

I really, really like it. The people who came up with this are quite clever indeed. It makes sense, since they've been doing this for 150 years! There's a neat "Singer 150th Anniversary" logo on it on the front - 1851 - 2001. Wow.

And if you're wondering why I don't put this at epinions as a review, it's because I can't stand the idea of someone else owning my content. Those things just *bug* me for some reason. Same reason I won't do book reviews at Amazon, though I'll read them. I won't give away my writing so that someone else can sell it (for a lot of money) and pay me diddly-squat (pennies at best). If there were a good place for such things that wouldn't do that (or excise URLs pointing elsewhere from what you write), that was noncommercial, then I might consider it, but there isn't.

Anyway, I'll close this with a few more stitches:

And I'll also mention that I did a *HUGE* amount of clearing-away-of-Stuff so that I could justify getting to play with my sewing machine. I went through tons of boxes, put up shelves in the garage, and sorted like crazy, to get to a point where I can sort of manage my Stuff. I'm not done, but I have slogged through an entire room full of disorganized Stuff that is now filtered at least.

[ beauty ] 2001-01-12
I like this vision/dream:  or whatever the heck it is, (DEAD LINK) from sevencrabrangoon.

I had a dream something similar to this several years ago. There was this group of people I met, they all wore these strange robes. They were very nice, totally at peace and relaxed and happy. And they said I could join them. I was all angstful for some reason, worried about things elsewhere. I guess I had taken refuge there somehow, just making a pit stop.

And they told me I could stay. Of course.

And I remember one robed person holding out their hands to me, offering a big friendly hug. And I was a little nervous and awkward, but I accepted the hug, and hugged back.

And it was wonderful - I felt at peace, I felt loved and accepted and protected and cared for and valued and beautiful and delighted, all at once.

And I knew that I was Home.

I knew that this was where I had always been meant to be.

And so these days I feel like it's my mission to make that place a reality. I know it may sound goofy or naive or stupid or whatever, but I don't fucking care. With the sword of self-respect I slash the hell out of that dragon that goes by the name of: "Fear of appearing like a dork". Life's too short for that shit.

Like I keep saying, I have a *lot* of work to do. The trouble is, my job keeps getting in the way of my Work. I must resolve this somehow.

I haven't slayed all of my dragons yet, I'm afraid. It makes me sad and a little ashamed. Like I know I could do better, should have done better by now. But maybe it just wasn't time yet - maybe I just had to grow a little more, be a little stronger, a little more sure of myself. Maybe I just had to explore the rotten options more fully so I would know just how rotten they were for me. Because otherwise, I might get wistful and think that somehow they were right, I might wish I could live that way. That is, when the going gets tough, and it *will* get tough, that's for sure.

So sometimes I just look myself in the mirror and ask, "Beth, when the hell are you going to finally decide to grow up?"

No answer, yet. Soon, I hope.

[ beauty body good manifesto my site ] 2001-01-09
Things are coming together:  It's really quite amazing and lovely. I'm not sure exactly how to describe it all, so I'll just start rattling stuff off...

I have been giving lots of personal importance to this new millenium starting, and at first I thought that I'd consider the winter solstice the beginning of the new year for me. You see, I've always kind of had this idea of using my own calendar, something that made more sense to me. I've never actually done it, mind you, but I think I will now.

So anyway, the solstice came and went and it didn't feel all that special to me. Ditto with the first of the year. The eclipse on Xmas eve and the asteroid nearly hitting earth could be said to mean something, if one wants to consider things in a certain way (perhaps signs that the era of Xtianism is waning?).

So I then thought more recently, after getting a nifty moon calendar of 2001 when I was in Denver, that perhaps I should take as my Day 1, Month 1, Year 1 of the New Era the day of the first full moon past the Solstice. Which is today.

And so these things have happened, in the past day, and I choose to take them as signs (and I don't expect anyone else to, mind you):

• My mother called last night to tell me that The Notebook has been found. I haven't written here about this special Notebook yet, I kept putting it off. Anyway, it's a black notebook that I left on the Ski Train that was lost - we checked the Lost & Found, badgered the Ski Train people, and it never turned up. I cried when I realized there was no hope - real tears of stupidity, regret, and loss. You see, in the Notebook were several valuable things: 1) all my papers to prove that I've paid around $2500 in debts that still show up on my credit report, including originals of bank statements, check carbons, a settlement letter, a copy of my divorce decree, and my social security card, 2) the memory book from my 10-year high school reunion, containing all the addresses & contact info for anyone I might want to get in touch with, and 3) all my notes for my information system for thirdhand.org. I hadn't worked on a thing since I lost the Notebook - I knew I'd have to re-do it all from memory, which was quite possible, but I didn't have the time to work on it anyway, and I was just kind of stewing in denial for a while. But so, miraculously, the Notebook has returned. I hope that all of its contents are intact - there is nothing of value in it to anyone but me. It's funny that while in Colorado, I dreamed I would get it back, but I dismissed the dream with pessimism, stating that the only dreams I have that ever come true involve the activities of my uterus. (Don't ask me why, but it works. If I get a dream about uh, uterine activity (such as that which tends to happen on a roughly monthly basis or that preceding the birth of a child), then it happens in the next day or two). So, the return of the Notebook is Sign #1.
• When I looked at myself in the mirror this morning, quickly brushing my teeth because I was late for the Big Meeting, I saw myself as really beautiful. This is rare, that when I catch a glimpse, it all looks pretty good - I usually focus on something that doesn't look right: something sagging here, a blemish there, some lumpiness over there, wishing it were different somehow. But not this morning. I looked and saw, simply, beauty. And it made me feel quite nice, and thankful for my body. Pretty amazing considering I still need to lose around 20 pounds to get to my ideal, but anyway. So, we have positive Sign #2.
• The other day, I had some interesting musings about physics and gravity and probability and whatnot, you know, the Big Questions about how the universe works and why it is the way it is, and so on. Last night, before drifting off to sleep, I regaled Spencer with some of my realizations, and in the process came to some astounding new ones. I think I've finally Figured It Out. Well, from my own point of view, anyway. A bunch of the bigger pieces of the puzzle, at least. And so, this morning, at the Big Meeting that I was late for, as I pretended to take notes during the presentation of boring corporate slides, I clarified my realizations even more, with a mere one page of notes. I think it's really stunning, even if it's just a re-explanation of what Real Physicists already know, just stated in terms that I (and I presume at least a couple other people on the planet) can now understand, with this new perspective I came up with. So, we've got Sign #3.
• And during this Big Meeting, the head of our whole division here at work went on about how the latest group of consultants had reported to the managers all the stuff that we've known for a long time about what's wrong and what needs to be changed. Blah blah blah, yadda yadda yadda. Oh, and he equivocated skilfully when pegged about whether there would be layoffs in Support (we had a corporate restructuring warning from on high the other day). He said something like "I don't know where *all of them* are going to be happening, so I can't say". A true politician - I wanted to get up and say, "We don't care where *all of them* are going to be - we just want to know whether ANY of them will be occuring in Support?". But of course I didn't. I just sat there drawing little symbols during the Q and A. At the end, he spoke of some ship-based analogy, asking us to ask ourselves whether we're committed to being in the boat or not. I guess it was supposed to be inspiring us or something, but all I could think is that I want to find the dinghy and paddle the hell away. Preferable if the dinghy is my outrigger canoe and I can just go off and surf the waves. Anyway... as he was speaking, I felt that truly I don't belong at this company anymore. I kind of almost resolved to quit, a decision I've been postponing for awhile. I can't really afford to, of course, but we'll see what happens - I may not have a choice if I get laid off. That's okay, too. I don't really mind. I'd actually look forward to it. I am so sick of this job, to be honest. It's a good job, but it's just not for me anymore. So I guess that's Sign #4.
• And then as I was writing symbols on my notepad, I finally figured out what to use my symbology for. I had developed some nifty symbols several years ago, trying several times to come up with a way to use it to represent a syllibary, a way to write phonetic speech in a simplified way or something, maybe for a language I would make up. I shelved it for a long time, because it just got so tangled any time I tried to take it very far. Anyway, today I figured out what to do with it - I made about 29 symbols that will be very useful for my personal little moon calendar. I really like them, this is going to be neato. So that's Sign #5.
• And tonight, we are going to sit down with our friend Luba and discuss the possibility of opening a cafe-type thing in Austin. Luba has found a nice retail space for rent not far from us, in a very choice location. Conceivably, we could all get together on a new business. Spencer worked with her before on her food business, in which she made all kinds of yummy, fresh vegetarian food and delivered it to some area grocery stores which then sold it. She got sick of doing it all herself (which is how it eventually got to be), and she stopped doing it when she went to Beirut earlier this year. So she is considering doing a little cafe with take-out food in refrigerated cases, the same hummus and pasta salads she made before. People could grab it and go - the place isn't big enough for more than just a couple token tables, so she doesn't envision an atmosphere with people spending lots of time there while they eat. I am very excited about the idea - her daughter Clavdia is an artist, and she could surely sell lots of her artwork if it were displayed on the walls there. Heck, I'd like to do artwork too, with cut paper stuff once I get a laser cutter. So perhaps this is a new direction for us all to go in? We'll have to see... But it's an exciting possibility at the very least. Sign #6.

Okay, these things may not sound like a lot to someone else, but to me it's very meaningful. I'm very eager to see where this all leads... and yes, you'll hear more about my theories of physics. To give a quick hint of what I'm getting at - I think I figured out what gravity is (and no, it doesn't involve "gravitons" or any particles other than the matter involved), what black holes are, and why quantum uncertainty is only resolved when an observer steps in. It all fits together very neatly to me. And the implications are amazing - it ties in to so very many things. I do believe I'm going to have to write a book on all of this (including gobs of what's in the Pinata Manifesto (but not the parts I'm embarassed to have written at this point! Heh!)). It connects to the way we think, how events unfold and why, event horizons big and small, belief, magic, and coincidences. Dang, I may have to start a new religion or something (don't worry, I recognize the risk that I'd probably be the only member to ever join, and that doesn't bother me). Or at least a new philosophy. Should be fun!

Who knows, maybe I'll look back on this day years from now and think to myself, "Ah, I was so deluded back then!". But that's okay. When things are going positively, you've just gotta ride that wave, take it where it goes.

But first, you've gotta paddle like mad to catch it! I've got a *lot* of work to do...

[ beauty books good movies ] 2001-01-08
Hayao Miyazaki is amazing!  He's the guy who has done My Neighbor Totoro, Grave of the Fireflies, and a bunch of other things, including Princess Mononoke and Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind.

I am very impressed with his work, and I can't wait to see more of it. I'm going to buy the Nausicaa graphic novels, and since Princess Mononoke came out on DVD but isn't out on VHS, it's the perfect excuse for me to break down and buy a DVD player! :)

I'm just reading all sorts of stuff about him, including interviews with him. Here's a small taste:

• An interview fragment:

  Even human beings' inability to coexist with nature is part of nature. When humans say when it suits them that they can't coexist, or that that's a bad thing, all that is part of nature too, right? But if you consider whether or not civilization is doing well, as long as nature doesn't become a constraint, I would have to say it's diseased.

• Why he uses so many female heroines
• A bunch more interviews & articles

I love this exquisite feeling - knowing that I have a bunch of really wonderful things to see and read, and that the author clearly has a worldview similar to mine (at least in certain ways). I'm giddy with anticipation!

[ beauty good ] 2001-01-08
Moro Totoro:  Wow, they *do* have toys, I'll have to see what I can get! I'm reading the FAQ at the Totoro site I mentioned below, and it's amazing. I didn't realize that it was originally released as a double feature with Grave of the Fireflies (another excellent animated movie, though heartbreakingly sad (it's about wartime Japan, including the a-bomb and its horrific aftermath)). I also didn't realize that the mother in the story had TB, and that it was sort of autobiographical, in that the writer/director's mother had TB when he was a child.

And it's now been definitively decided that I absolutely *MUST* go to Burning Man this year, even if only for an afternoon. You see, there's going to be a full-sized cat bus (from My Neighbor Totoro)!!! I gotta go, I gotta show Elena. She'll be so thrilled! I'll figure out some way to compromise with Spencer. We can just stop by for an afternoon, long enough to see the cat bus, not long enough to get too uncomfortable...

[ beauty mammalog movies ] 2001-01-08
My Neighbor Totoro:  One of the movies in Elena's collection is My Neighbor Totoro, and I like it quite a bit. It features strong, positive female main characters, something I'm always on the lookout for. I'm so glad that there are more of them out there than when I was a kid.

Chicken Run also has strong female characters, too. I love Ginger - I love how she's a responsible leader, good at bringing together the strengths of the other chickens and coordinating their efforts, strong *and* caring, she's brave, clever, adventurous, uncompromising, and also well respected (mostly) by the other chickens. And most of all, she doesn't put up with any crap from Rocky. She eventually earns his respect, too.

Back to Totoro for a moment. I found the script, at a nifty site about the movie. I wish there were some little action figures I could buy for Elena. This movie is great. I love how the characters really work together as a community. And how even though the girls' mother is sick, it's coped with sanely by all involved, I think. It's just so... non-American, really. And I love the underlying reverence for and wonder of nature. Great, great movie. I can't wait to start a garden with Elena this year - I'll bet that she'll yell "Totoro!!" when our seeds start to grow. :)

[ beauty mammalog ] 2000-12-22
Sometimes she's so beautiful, it almost hurts:  I took this nice picture of Elena sleeping the other day. Something about the colors, I just find incredibly beautiful - the muted blues and greenish and grayish tones work very well together. Plus of course the gorgeous little sleeping princess herself.

And then the other day, I got up and started getting ready, and I noticed a treasure on my leg: a little footprint. As we lay together in the morning warmth, her foot left a lasting impression on my skin. How lovely.

People who sleep away from their little ones are truly missing out (and so are their kids).

[ beauty food good ] 2000-12-22
Okay, Sudden Mood Improvement:  I just came across the Local Harvest site, and it KICKS ASS. Basically it's a guide to organic and locally-grown food across the country. Cool!

I am definitely going to check out the Pure Luck farm in Dripping Springs (not too far from here). They've got dairy goats and make goat cheese that I have heard is superb (but I haven't yet tried it).

I also want to start going to the Westlake Farmer's Market here in town (all the vendors have to grow or make what they sell - no resellers allowed! How cool!).

Oooo, I'm so excited to have this great source of information. There's even a CSA farm in Austin - wow! I worked on a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) farm in Massachusetts a few years ago, they rock.

Check this thing out - find some delicious local food wherever you are. Support your local growers instead of always buying from the mega-corporate-conglomerates. Unless you *want* to be like a mere cog in a machine, because you *enjoy* that kind of thing...

[ beauty design rants ] 2000-12-20
I hate it when cool people die:  and there's been a lot of it going around, dammit! Today's newly-found-out death involves Dr. David Huffman, the guy who invented Huffman codes (a way to compress data, used in a wide variety of applications) when he was a grad student at MIT.

I was looking around hoping to find a web page of his, since I had recently looked back at the webzine Grafica Obscura, which has all sorts of nifty stuff, including a page featuring Dr. Huffman and some of the neat things he created by folding paper. I was looking for his web page, hoping to find instructions for making some of those nifty things, and I find that he died last year. Dagnabbit! I found a slashdot thread that includes comments from some of his former students, and more background on how he developed Huffman codes.

Anyway, also at Grafica Obscura they show how a laser cutting machine can be used to cut paper precisely. I wish I had a laser cutter so that I could make my cut paper cards (like the ones pictured here) more easily - it gets darn tedious with the xacto blade.

This particular laser cutter goes for only $353,550.00, so c'mon, don't be a cheapskate, buy me a nice xmas present!

[Yes, I'm trying to be a little whimsical to hide how bummed out I am that such a clever, brilliant guy is dead. From cancer, no less - too many people are getting cancer these days...]

[ beauty family ] 2000-12-20
Saw the lights last night:  Down at 37th street, here in Austin, about nine blocks South of us. This area is somewhat infamous, since there is a block where a fellow named Jamie started a tradition of massive, creative, garish light displays. Most of the houses on the street are now bedecked with twinkling lights every holiday season, and it's truly a delight and wonder to behold.

I took some pictures with my new digital camera, and about 33 out of 51 came out okay. It was hard to hold the thing still - I'm still learning! Anyway, here's one, and if you want to see all of them, just browse the pix directory and look for anything that begins with "lights":

This pic shows the Volcano House, taken from across the street.

Some of my other favorites of the bunch:

• The tree in front of Jamie's house
• A typical house in the area - that's Elvis in the front window. At the side of this house are: a larger-than-life-size Heisman trophy statue, a huge Sphinx, and flying monkeys from the Wizard of Oz in a tree. Towards the back, they have a 12-foot high Eiffel tower, just to give you an idea.
• A cooking range (with a piglet and fish lights inside the oven)
• Lights which have never left the plastic trees they were packaged in - at the front corner of Jamie's house

It's rather an intense display, chaotically beautiful, whimsically creative, and best experienced on foot. The pictures just don't do it justice - there are numerous light strands crossing the street overhead, and all sorts of odd things in Jamie's backyard. It's just amazing.

[ beauty ] 2000-12-19
Sometimes I just come across things:  At exactly the right time. I wandered to this article about a woman singer, Eva Cassidy, with an amazing voice. Unfortunately, she died of cancer a few years ago.

I can't listen to any of the sound samples of her work right now (but I'll try when I get home). I find it interesting that she has done versions of Over the Rainbow and What a Wonderful World, which Israel Kamakawiwo'ole has also done (I bought his cd recently, and I love it). He also died a couple years ago.

But that's not the most interesting part. The most interesting thing is that at this Eva Cassidy page, I see the announcement that there will be a story about her on Morning Edition (NPR) tomorrow morning. Now... what are the odds that I'd come across this today, in time for me to get ready to hear the story tomorrow morning?

Pretty cool. Sometimes things just come together nicely. It's so lovely when life goes that way.

[ beauty family ] 2000-12-19
Look closely:  at Elena's hair in the pictures I mentioned below. You can see the gorgeous color she's got, illuminated by the sunlight.

I have never in my life seen a more beautiful color of hair - it's brown, but when the sun hits it, you can see these rich, reddish tones that hide within.

It's like a secret treasure.

And lucky me, I get to be her mother, so I get to see it every day.

[ beauty consume family ] 2000-12-19
New toy! New toy!  So I finally got one o them combination webcam & low-end digital cameras. I decided I couldn't wait for the Logitech Quickcam Traveler to come out, so I got the Intel Pocket PC Camera. It kicks butt! Just what I wanted, I'm very pleased.

It can take about a hundred pix at 640 x 480 resolution, and about two hundred at 320 x 240. There is no lcd on it, and no flash, but I think it works very well. Here's a picture I took of Elena (shrunk so it's not so huge):

It's definitely quite serviceable for my needs. Keep in mind that I'm the kind of person who for years couldn't hear the difference between cassette tapes and cd's (and even now it doesn't really bug me). So pictures that are pretty darn good are good enough for me, at least for now. To me, it's good enough if you can make out what's in the picture and any rough spots aren't major enough to dampen your enjoyment of the picture.

Anyway, look for lots more pix as time goes on. From yesterday, I present to you:

• The big version of that Elena pic (big file size for some reason, perhaps related to the fact that I had to rotate it)
• Elena as I see her much of the time - that is, running away towards Adventure at full speed.
• Me, up on the roof - untangling Xmas lights, which I then hung.
• Elena relaxing in the tub
• Our bathroom, lit by three candles (this was a low lighting test)

[ beauty good quotes ] 2000-12-14
The more I read about Russell Crowe:  The more I like him. Okay, it's not just that he's incredibly good looking (imho), but he seems to be a really cool guy. F'rinstance, when asked the often-heard-these-days question of "boxers or briefs?", he replied:

None of your f**king business!

That's just plain kick-ass. Very few public figures have the balls to just draw a line and say that, when asked unreasonable personal questions.

He exhibits, as it were, the antithesis of what you usually see on Jerry Springer.

Though he does reportedly live in a trailer on the farm he set up for his parents in Australia (according to this article, anyway). Heh! (Hey, it's probably an *extremely nice* trailer).

Heck, I wanna live in a trailer too! Yes, I decided this before I knew Russell did, so *shut up* already, I know what you're thinking. I might end up going for a nice used bus though, since from what I've been reading, way too many RVs and trailers are total crap.

[ beauty ] 2000-12-13
I took video this morning:  of the ice all over the place from the storm we had. It covered essentially everything. Many of the trees are in a very, very bad way.

They kicked us out of work early yesterday, and told us to not come in until 10am today. I wish they'd just let us stay home the whole day. Oh well.

Our power went out in the middle of the night, and it got extremely cold in the house. Luckily it was back on by 8am, though. I hate having to re-set all of the clocks.

Good lord, this is so boring.

Anyway, mebbe I'll do some video capture of the icy stuff and put it on my site. After I get thirdhand.org going, that is.

I'm working on my db design, and making lots of progress, but I'm not *quite* there yet. There about two or three really crucial bits I have to hash out. It's coming together nicely and changing quite a bit as I pin down the implementation, as I expected it would... It's going to rock very hard. :)

So now I have thrown three (3) snowballs in Austin. One yesterday, and two today, all from the ice on my car. Ok, not really snow, but the closest thing to it here. It's odd actually needing to wear a warm coat here. Heh.

[ beauty later ] 2000-12-13
A Myst III fly-through:  which I'll have to look at later (at home). Should be spiffy!

[ beauty ] 2000-12-13
Bill Hicks's grave:  looks like this. Just happened across it via metafilter today. Rest in peace, Saint Bill.

[ beauty ] 2000-12-12
Whoa, *cool*!  Okay, I may finally have to get a GPS device one o these days. There is a spiffy new hobby called geocaching, where people put caches of stuff at specific coordinates for others to find. Salon has a story about it. Wow. Neato. :)

[ beauty consume ] 2000-12-11
I'm changing my look:  Yes, that's right, my wardrobe is becoming much, much blacker. I don't know, maybe it was watching the Matrix the last time that put me over the edge, but now it's black, black, black, black, and black for me.

Well, not entirely - I still enjoy wearing nice solid-color t-shirts.

Anyway, so I have three black t-shirts now, and two pairs of black fuzzy pants (polar fleece - one thick and one thinner). And of course I've brought my Doc Martens out of the garage where they've been sitting for over two years. I'm wearing them again today. It's going to take me a while to learn how to walk in them normally, but I'm getting there. Once they're truly fully broken in it will be easier.

Anyway, so on Saturday, there I am at Sam's Club, and I see this leather jacket. Hmm, thinks I, let me see how I look in it. I tried it on and liked it, but since I was already spending close to $200, I balked at getting it.

So I thought and thought and thought about it after I got home, and decided that suddenly I really really wanted it. So on Sunday, I found out when they opened, and got there as soon as I could after they had. Unfortunately, the jacket wasn't there, and I was very, very disappointed. I talked to the very nice clothing expert lady, and asked if they'd be getting in any more shipments. She told me no, that this was it, and after Xmas they'd be filling up with warm-weather clothes. Damn!

So I then asked her if there were other Sam's Clubs in town. Sure enough, there were two. So I headed to the northern one, and rushed inside. To my delight, there was a table full of these ladies' black leather coats right at the front. I found a style I liked, not quite as much as the other one, but still quite good. They had two in my size, so I picked the one with the collar that didn't have a weird crease in it.

And then... I went and looked at: the black leather pants. Yes, yes, I confess, I did. And I tried on the biggest size they had (over my shorts - there are no changing rooms at Sam's Club), a 14. They were quite tight and I couldn't zip them, but I decided to get them anyway.

See, a 14 is the size I should fit into once I lose this extra weight I've got. I know, I know, buying small clothes and planning to lose weight to get into them is utter folly, and I agree.

But I just had to have them. This is so, so unlike me. I mean, black leather?!?!?! *Me*?!??! You gotta be kidding.

But no more - this is the New Me, and it kicks ass. I look *good* in black. Well, I think so anyway. I love my new jacket. It's royally cool. I tried on the pants at home and managed to zip 'em up, and they were *nice*. I didn't do anything imprudent such as bend over or attempt to sit in them (lest they split), but I could see the clear potential of how great they'd look once I lose the extra weight.

Maybe, just maybe, this is enough motivation to get me started back on the right track. I dunno. We'll see.

What it comes down to, though, is that they were too good and too cheap to pass up. The jacket is $99, and the pants were $79. Can't beat it!

Oh yeah, I also went nuts and got the Star Wars trilogy on video ($28), and three more videos for Elena: Toy Story, Alice in Wonderland, and My Neighbor Totoro (a total bargain at a mere $6!).

So in the past two days, I've spent almost $475 at Sam's Club. Good lord, stop me before I spend again!

[ beauty ] 2000-12-06
Pretty:  This Dutch guy's work is beautiful. I don't have time to explore all of it right now, but just the little bit I've looked at has been exquisite. It's interactive java stuff, you move the mouse and it affects how the thing is drawn and how it moves. Try it, it's pretty!

[ beauty ] 2000-12-04
So I'm listening:  to Israel Kamakawiwo'ole, the Hawaiian singer who sang the eToys theme. I bought the cd from Amazon (after several attempts to find it locally), and I hadn't really had a chance to listen to it yet.

So I brought it and my headphones here to work, which is something I rarely do. I can't concentrate well on either the music or my work, usually, so I don't listen to music at work as a rule.

Anyway, this thing is tremendous - absolutely beautiful, every song. I love his voice. It's so soothing and sweet and melodious.

And I found another treasure - there was a song I heard but once about three years ago when I was driving to work, and I despaired that I didn't remember enough of it to ever find it again... Well, I just finished listening to it. It's on this album!

Pretty amazing. Lucky, lucky me. So this music is making me miss Hawaii again, very badly. I keep thinking of soft sand on my feet, the sunshine, the breezes, the way it's never too hot or too cold, the sound of the waves, the clean water, the way you can orient yourself anywhere: mauka, makai, ewa and diamond head.

Dang, I really need to go back. I want to see the huge banyan trees, smell the plumeria, wash the salt off of my skin after riding a few waves on my boogie board, watch the little kids play in the surf... this music brings it all back.

What am I doing here? I should be on the beach. With Elena, of course. God, she'd love the ocean so much. I just know it.

So, I'm happy and filled with longing for faraway shores right now. Thinking about Kaena point, the solitude and wildness there. The olivene-bearing sand of the toilet bowl, sparkling in the sun. The rough rocks at Hale'iwa beach park, little bowls carved out by the waves, and the turtles playing just offshore.

All right I'd better stop or I'll never get back to work.

[ beauty books good ] 2000-12-04
Finally read Jimmy Corrigan:  Yesterday, I read the first third of Jimmy Corrigan during the day, and finished it after Elena went to sleep. I was up until two.

It's one of the best books I've ever read in my life.

And I'm damn picky, so that's saying something. It was so incredibly moving, and subtle, and complex, and interwoven, and exquisite, and I could go on and on and on. Please, read it!

And buy it from a local comic book shop, not a chain store, and DEFINITELY not from Amazon, okay? If comics are going to survive as an art form, people need to support their local outlets. If there are comics out there that are anywhere near even 10% as good as this book, I'm totally hooked.

I mean, I've liked comics for a while, I just don't have that many of them, and I don't know how to find the best stuff (I'm very very picky). And some of it is clearly brilliant, like Art Spiegelman's Maus, and now Chris Ware's Jimmy Corrigan. Damn, what a beautiful book, both to look at (the cover & everything) and to read. Wow.

I am so profoundly affected by this book, I can't even begin to describe it. Words can't do it justice. (because it's comics, you see - it's more than words, more than pictures. Read Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics for more details on the history, how & why & wonder of comics as an art form unlike any other.)

I already loaned it out to Fred, a cool coworker of mine. I can't wait until he's done, because I want to re-read it. I'm sure that I missed a lot the first time through...

[ beauty ] 2000-11-01
The ads by etoys  use music that has the ability to make me cry. Easily. I don't know why. Sigh. They had an ad campaign awhile ago, and it would invariably make me cry. I recall it involved a little kid and a pregnant mom, and the mom getting something for the kid to prepare for the new arrival.

The new one is different but I can't remember what it is, all I can remember is the music (which is the same, a bit of gentle lilting guitar, and a "mmm hmmm mmm mm" vocal). If any of you can find me this music, I will pay you. Really.

I checked adcritic.com, and etoys returned nothing on their searches. *pout*. It's not often a short piece of music can affect me so. I *must* have it!

[ beauty mammalog ] 2000-11-01
Gotta be the shoes:  I realized that the colors of splattered paint blending with the pink embroidery on Elena's nikes was quite beautiful, so I scanned one of them:

She'll be grown out of these shoes in the blink of an eye, so I felt I needed to share this. I really do admire the subtle colors added to them by the touches of paint.

[ beauty body ] 2000-10-19
Scanner fun:  I scanned in some more rock last night, then I decided to scan my hand. Then I decided to scan my face (with eyes closed!). And I played around a bit in Paint Shop Pro with the resulting images. Whee!

Unfortunately I didn't scale them all reasonably, so most of them are HUGE. If you really want, you can poke around my pix directory to see them all (sort by date, it helps).

Here's one of my favorites that's of somewhat reasonable size, of my hand with a chrome effect applied:

I'll make a page to exhibit the other pix, some of which are nifty to look at. At least I think so.

[ beauty design school ] 2000-10-18
This pop-up thingie  ... appeared in my mailbox last week. Well, it was in a big, white, envelope, all flattened (as with the image from when I scanned it).

When I opened the envelope and pulled it out, it went "whup!" and popped into a cube! I was quite astonished, and I thought it was pretty spiffy.

I left it in cube form until I could show it to Spencer, and asked him to figure out how to flatten it again without hurting it.

It took him just a few seconds, and it turns out there are little paper "hooks" inside, and a rubber band that pulls the whole thing together. Elena played with it for awhile, then we took out the rubber band, and she was quite miffed (hey, we didn't want her to choke on it!).

So anyway, I'm going to add this to the School Projects list, to make things like this. I'm going to rip it apart a bit more, and scan the inside bits too. Darned ingenious. It's pretty cool (and damn rare) when I don't even really mind being advertised at, because the vehicle is so nifty.

[ beauty consume ] 2000-10-12
Oooo, color me jealous!  Somebody made a portable Atari 2600. Oooooo, I want one! But I'd have to build it myself. Hmm, I've always wanted to learn about electronics...

[ beauty ] 2000-10-10
Behold the mutant clover:  The people who lived in this house before us planted a whole lotta clover along the front walk. It's nice, and the bees like it a whole lot. Since the bees are so fond of it, and Spencer is not so fond of it, he's been ripping out the clover, bit by bit. I've got nothing against bees, I'd just prefer that they not hang around in our front yard where Elena is very very likely to step on one and get stung (or me or Spencer, for that matter).

So anyway, the things are somewhat tenacious, and I didn't know this, but they have a big underground root thing, which I think is called a rhizome. Spencer's been digging 'em up, but there still there, in patches (which he will eventually eradicate).

For reasons unknown to me, the clover in our front yard is especially.... lucky. Or, for the biologically-minded among you... mutant! Yes, that's right, before Spencer's eradication campaign, it took all of about fifteen seconds to locate a four-leafed clover. And about five more seconds to find another. And another. And a five-leafed clover, etc. We must be the luckiest people ever, what with all these darn clovers with more than three leaves.

At first, I picked a bunch, and then I didn't know what to do with them, so they just sat there and shriveled and blew away. Later I flattened some between the pages of a book. I can't remember which books, but I think the bigger ones (but not the Holy of Holies, the DICTIONARY).

Where am I going with this? Oh yeah, now I remember. So there are a few clovers left, and I looked yesterday to see if I could find some mutants to share with you all, and well... I did! Here they are:

5-leafed clover, with one leaf completely hidden (you will have to take my word on this), and one mostly hidden.

---

4-leafed clover, kind of mushed and flattened and with leaves of differing sizes.

---

Siamese twin clovers, aka "conjoined" clovers. You can see how the two stems are sort of fused together.

---

Anyway, enjoy! They'll soon be gone. I think Spencer has chucked most of the unlucky clover rhizomes onto our compost heap, but if you really really want some, I might be persuaded to mail some to you (I have no idea if they would survive the journey, or if they'd produce 4- and 5-leafed clovers once they got to you). So you have to ask yourself, do you feel lucky?

[ beauty ] 2000-09-22
Amazing feats of Lego building:  Can be found at Eric Harshbarger's site. Truly amazing, especially the Lego desk (and the story of how and why it was built, heh).

My brother Bill and I played with Legos enthusiastically throughout our childhoods, he more than I. I still remember the sound of the big bag o Legos being poured onto the floor, and the sound of scraping one's hand through to find a particular piece.

My brother still buys Lego sets on occasion, though I haven't since I was a kid. I guess whenever Elena's ready to start playing with them (when she's old enough not to try to eat them), then I'll get back into it. :)

[ beauty ] 2000-09-19
Sometimes it's the obvious things that get ya:  There is this painting, well, a print of a painting, that my grandfather bought many many years ago. It hung in my mother's house as she grew up, and she liked it, and then it hung in my grandmother's apartment, where I saw it often when visiting her, and I really liked it too. This is what it looks like:

Growing up, this was a rare thing - a realistic, beautiful, non-pornographic picture of a naked woman. I think this is a Good Thing for kids to see. Where, in our society, are they going to get an idea of what real people (not supermodels) look like naked?

Anyway, when my grandmother died, this picture went to my mother, who recently gave it to me, and it now hangs in my bedroom.

None of us knew the artist or the title. I was going to scan an image of it, and then ask people on the net if they knew what it was.

Then it occurred to me to look for the artist's signature. Duh. So, subtly written in the lower left corner I see "J. Ingres". So simple.

I looked him up at art.com, and sure enough he's there (he is most famous for the painting "The Grand Odalisque"), and there's the picture. It's called "The Spring". And I can get another print of it if I want (bigger than the one I've got, and not very expensive).

I would have linked directly to the picture there, but with their bs frame system, I couldn't (and yes I know how to decode the URLs in frames, but they use some bs system where every page's dynamically allocated bs URL expires almost immediately).

[ beauty ] 2000-09-19
I am now lava re-enabled:  The light of my lava lamp at my desk burned out a couple of weeks ago. I know that they require a certain specific type of bulb, so what did I do?

I scalped the bulb from the lava lamp I have at home, since I'm too lazy to go bulb shopping. Also, I never use the one at home.

So now I can keep my hands warm again, here in the Arctic Simulator.

More about my lava lamp: it's silver with red lava in clear liquid. I've had it for several years, and I love it. When I first got it, the lava was almost transparent, but then slowly over the first few dozen hours that I ran it, little snowflakes of opacity began to grow within it. It was amazing to watch - you could see the heat currents in the lava dome. Near the center, the little snowflakes would move up, then reach the top of the dome, cool, and drift to the outer part of the dome before gently descending. Absolutely incredible to watch. And then of course it gradually became totally opaque, but that's okay.

A long time later, I noticed that it tended to run a little bit too hot - the lava would particulate into little bitty red balls, and clear bubbles would frequently appear within the main body of the red lava. Not good. So I found the perfect solution: a dimmer switch. Now I can control the mellowtude of my lava lamp with great accuracy. I saw a cow orker who had a lava lamp at his desk as well who had the same problem, so I loaned him a dimmer switch, and he's had good results since then.

Why do I have a lava lamp at work? Because in my cubicle (conveniently located near FIVE A/C vents) my hands would get so cold that I couldn't really type very well anymore. I found that if I held the lava lamp in my lap and hugged it with my hands, they'd warm up nicely. I've moved cubes about four times since then, but it's still darn cold here most days.

My lava lamp at home is black with red lava and clear liquid, and was given to me by my father, since he had an extra one. He had an extra one because his wife, my step-mother, used to work for Haggerty Industries, the company that makes lava lamps (she worked in a different division that sold ceramic supplies). So they had several, and once my dad got one with the color scheme he wanted (black lamp with black lava), he didn't use the black/red one anymore.

And in case you didn't know, there are people at SGI who use lava lamps to generate random numbers. Pretty spiffy, although they are way too pedantic about calling them Lava Lites instead of lava lamps, trademark nonsense and all. But I understand, since they're quite visible to the Lava Lawyers.

But me, I'll always call 'em lava lamps. They can bite me.

[ beauty humor ] 2000-09-13
The glory of old motels:  This collection of old motel postcards is really neato (via David Chess's weblog). I can't help but feel a profound desolation looking at many of these motels. It's hard to imagine them fresh and new and happening. The commentary about the cards on this site is witty, insightful, and made me laugh out loud multiple times. And I'm not even done going through them all yet.

[ beauty ] 2000-09-08
Stereogram of the week:  at Magiceye.com. I always see these things as inverted, that is, the parts that are supposed to pop out closer to me, instead look pushed in, away from me. Why is that? (Brain damage? Eye bizarreness? Sign of superiority?)

[ beauty ] 2000-09-08
A stereopair of Oahu:  I might look at this at home. There are lots of other spiffy images at the Visible Earth Project.

[ beauty design my site ] 2000-09-05
About the background & graphics:  Well okay, graphic, singular. They are scanned from a piece of marble tile that I carved. It's sitting here on my computer now. Anyway, it's a white Italian floor tile that I cut into several pieces. I carved the sun-thing in this piece here, which is about 4 x 5 inches or so. The sun is around 2 inches in diameter. There's a border on two sides of the tile, but it's not finished. I don't know if it ever will be.

So now you know.

And I may write more about stone and carving and marble and my relationship to these things at a later date.

[ beauty humor random thoughts rants ] 2000-09-05
If I were an Indian  and I had the job of naming the months, I'd name this month "Month when small bits of partially eaten pecans continually rain down from the trees". But then again this will likely go on for several months. Or half the year. Whatever.

Those dang squirrels sure know how to drop 'em right into the open trunk of my car, too. Speaking of which, I actually washed the outside of my car this weekend. This only happens a couple times a year, mind you. Finally I couldn't stand the bird poop and other detritus, including this weird scum that sticks to the windows. I am not sure of the origin of this sticky hard-to-see-through film, but I am ready to blame the pecan trees for it.

Which brings to mind the irony of the fact that the trees are gorgeous and huge and I love them and all, and the shade they provide fills my heart with gladness during this oppressive heat (it was 110 degrees yesterday, an ALL TIME record for Austin, and it's fucking SEPTEMBER!!), but I am sick and tired of dealing with the myriad stuff that they exude. There must be hundreds of pounds worth of sticks, pecans, leaves, weird little pollen thingies, and other assorted crap that lands on our lawn, roof, car, and deck each year, which I am obliged to collect and tote back to our compost pile. Sigh. I know, I know, it's the price of having nice trees. It would just be a lot more worth it if I actually liked to eat pecans.

[ beauty design good ] 2000-08-14
Oooh, pretty!  A wooden mirror. It's composed of little wooden blocks that are computer controlled to tilt at various angles and reflect the light. Wow, beautiful and amazing.

[ beauty design good ] 2000-08-11
Fabric Fetish:  I bought... a LOT of fabric when I was in Denver. I couldn't help it! Denver Fabrics has a new Annex which has womdigeous loads of cheap fabric, like $2/pound or $2/yard. So I grabbed tons of linen-like stuff, and various rayon-oid things too. I can't wait to make some nice clothes for Elena and me.

Speaking of which, it was triply temping since not only did they have kinds of fabric I can't find here, but it was ultra-cheap, and the Annex was set up such that Elena could freely run around while I shopped without causing damage or being damaged, so I was able to browse for quite a while and thoroughly explore almost everything they had. Also, she played in the fabric bins for a while, which was really cute. Anyway, there was no way all the stuff I bought would fit in my luggage, so I packed it in a box for my mother to send to me. So I have to wait for it, but it's not too terribly rough. I really miss sewing! I already have huge amounts of fabric, but it's been a long time since I bought any, and I kind of went nuts. Oh well.

[ beauty ] 2000-07-27
Andy Goldsworthy:  Daniel sent me a couple of good links for Andy Goldsworthy (the guy who makes breathtakingly beautiful sculptures outdoors using whatever natural materials are available). There's a nice article at Smithsonian Magazine Online, and of course a Yahoo category.

[ beauty family good ] 2000-07-21
Sweet moments to remember:  This morning, Elena was sleeping while I was getting ready. She made some noise like she was waking up, so I came in. She wasn't really ready to get up, and I held her a little and she fell asleep across my chest, with her head on my left shoulder. I just layed down and stayed with her, and enjoyed it. I patted her little back, and held her close. I beheld and admired her little moon face, and kissed her. I decided it didn't matter if I got to work later than usual, nothing else mattered but this tender time with her. So we did that for about half an hour. I'm so glad I did that... when I'm an old woman, I'll still be glad. She's growing up so quickly - it seems strange to think of her as a baby anymore, she seems like such a little girl.

[ beauty random thoughts ] 2000-07-19
File under Mysteries:  Again on the way to work, I saw a plant which I see just about every day. This plant is big and vigorous and green and looks like some fern on steroids or something, and it's growing on a pole. That is, a light pole, of the sort that holds up streetlights. It's at this corner of a frontage road and a highway bridge. I have no idea how it's in/on the pole (some kind of hole in the side?), how it got there, or how it manages to flourish. And oh, flourish it does. The thing has many sets of leaves draping towards the ground, several feet long. How does it get water? How does it get nutrients? I am almost tempted to go by one day, stop my car, and try to snip a cutting from it, to propagate and keep alive. Because if this plant can survive on a frickin' light pole, then surely my habitual plant neglect is something it can withstand easily. I am totally mystified. I will try to get a picture of it sometime, and revisit this issue.