Friends
Dec. 25th, 2009
11:25 pm - I know this was a bunch of you
We bought our first real server
At the Campbell Fry's.
Ran it til the hard drive died;
Was the summer of 99.
Me and some kids from school
Had some code and our own domain
Til it failed, our backers got nervous.
Shoulda had a business plan
When I look back now
Those weekends seemed to last forever
And if I could score some e
Yeah, I'd always try to be there.
Those were the best highs of my life
Ain't no use in compiling
When you're only writing scripts.
Spent our evenings flipping on candy;
I met you on those trips.
Rollin' in the conference room
You said it wasn't just the drug talk
And when you touched my hair
Felt like we were on a spacewalk.
Those were the best highs of my life
Back in the summer of '99
Man we were killin' brain cells
We were young and stupid
We thought we had ideas
We just needed to drink more water, more water, yo
And now the market's changing
Look at everyone that's gone in debt.
Sometimes I boot up that old server
Try to see if you're on Facebook yet.
Lying on our velvet couch
You said that we'd be coming down soon.
Oh the way you touched my hair
So glad that we were in the Chill Room.
Those were the best highs of my life
Back in the summer of '99
------
For consideration: apologies to Bryan Adams
Dec. 24th, 2009
08:47 pm - Yet Another Very Important Opinion On The Internet
Imagine, for a moment, that you could put a dozen of the world's most beautiful supermodels together somewhere. Then, you dress them all up in ridiculously vivid clothes, only to start hosing them down with fluorescent paint and glow in the dark glitter. Then, at the peak of this wet-nightie extravaganza, you demand that they start debating the merits of shamanic animism in the context of present-day environmental devastation, punctuating their sentences with fireworks and a fresh round of glow-spray.
Do all this as a $400M science fiction film and you have AVATAR. Dumb as mud, cringe-inducing, a fifteen-year-old's notion of deep ideas at best... but I would happily watch it chatter away for any arbitrary length of time. After all, I was fifteen once myself.
------
For consideration: And say whatever else you must, as big dumb Hollywood blockbusters go, at least it's not an adaptation or licensed property or remake for once
06:55 pm - Annual winter holiday repost
From E.B. White, 1952.
From this high midtown hall, undecked with boughs, unfortified with mistletoe, we send forth our tinselled greetings as of old, to friends, to readers, to strangers of many conditions in many places. Merry Christmas to uncertified accountants, to tellers who have made a mistake in addition, to girls who have made a mistake in judgment, to grounded airline passengers, and to all those who can't eat clams! We greet with particular warmth people who wake and smell smoke. To captains of river boats on snowy mornings we send an answering toot at this holiday time. Merry Christmas to intellectuals and other despised minorities! Merry Christmas to the musicians of Muzak and men whose shoes don't fit! Greetings of the season to unemployed actors and the blacklisted everywhere who suffer for sins uncommitted; a holly thorn in the thumb of compilers of lists! Greetings to wives who can't find their glasses and to poets who can't find their rhymes! Merry Christmas to the unloved, the misunderstood, the overweight. Joy to the authors of books whose titles begin with the word "How" (as though they knew!). Greetings to people with a ringing in their ears; greetings to growers of gourds, to shearers of sheep, and to makers of change in the lonely underground booths! Merry Christmas to old men asleep in libraries! Merry Christmas to people who can't stay in the same room with a cat! We greet, too, the boarders in boarding houses on 25 December, the duennas in Central Park in fair weather and foul, and young lovers who got nothing in the mail. Merry Christmas to people who plant trees in city streets; merry Christmas to people who save prairie chickens from extinction! Greetings of a purely mechanical sort to machines that think--plus a sprig of artificial holly. Joyous Yule to Cadillac owners whose conduct is unworthy of their car! Merry Christmas to the defeated, the forgotten, the inept; joy to all dandiprats and bunglers! We send, most particularly and most hopefully, our greetings and our prayers to soldiers and guardsmen on land and sea and in the air--the young men doing the hardest things at the hardest time of life. To all such, Merry Christmas, blessings, and good luck! We greet the Secretaries-designate, the President-elect; Merry Christmas to our new leaders, peace on earth, good will, and good management! Merry Christmas to couples unhappy in doorways! Merry Christmas to all who think they are in love but aren't sure! Greetings to people waiting for trains that will take them in the wrong direction, to people doing up a bundle and the string is too short, to children with sleds and no snow! We greet ministers who can't think of a moral, gagmen who can't think of a joke. Greetings, too, to the inhabitants of other planets; see you soon! And last, we greet all skaters on small natural ponds at the edge of woods toward the end of afternoon. Merry Christmas, skaters! Ring, steel! Grow red, sky! Die down, wind! Merry Christmas to all and to all a good morrow!
![[mood icon]](http://substitute.icons.ljtoys.org.uk/mi/dot.gif){kind=icon}
cold10:39 am - Lispy 0.5 released
Here's how Matthew Kennedy describes his Lispy project:
Lispy is a library manager for Common Lisp, written in Common Lisp. All of its dependencies except for GPG (with which signed maps and releases are verified) are written in portable Common Lisp. With this approach you should only need a Lisp implementation installed to get started. The Lispy project has two goals:
- Implement an easy to use, portable library manager.
- Provide a wealth of ready to install libraries.
He just released version 0.5 yesterday, so if his goals sound good to you, go give Lispy a try.
Last year Jochen Schmidt wrote his impressions of Lispy, so check that out too.
Dec. 23rd, 2009
04:01 pm - Liana's Playlist: December 2009
"Since" is since the last update six months ago.
Go-Gos continuing on a strong streak, but the new dark horse is Peter Gabriel with "Down to Earth" aka "the closing credits to WALL•E" aka "the only movie Liana has ever actually asked us to get for her on DVD so she could watch it again".
------
For consideration: which she does, continually, now, so we're going to have to think about how to temper that
03:00 pm - Christmas Eve
I am so proud of my church. I started attending Good Shepherd Episcopal Church last spring, a tiny congregation of only a few dozen people.
After Prop 8, I looked for a church that was not merely tolerant but actively supportive of all people. The Episcopal Church is moving strongly in the right direction, but Good Shepherd has been in that right place for a long time, and not even in a controversial way, but in a very basic this-is-who-we-are-and-this-is-how-we-mu
And though I wasn't looking for it, I am overjoyed also to have found a beautiful matriarchal consciousness that perhaps inevitably results from the ordination of women. Hearing and seeing a woman presider for the first time was revelatory. I thought, this is what they really mean when they say "mother church". We are not purely matriarchal or patriarchal--being Christocentric, our central deity is of course a man, but God as a whole or in her various aspects are conceived as female or genderless.
Last Sunday, the presider was a gay man, the deacon was a gay woman, and the preacher was a straight woman who delivered a homily quoting Hildegard of Bingen and celebrating the wisdom of older women, as signified by Elizabeth.
I need a witness!
Anyway, please consider coming to our Christmas Eve service, irrespective of your religion or secularity. Everyone is welcome! There will be friendly and funny people and much singing (including me in our tiny choir).
9 pm, Thursday, December 24
Good Shepherd Episcopal Church
1005 Hearst (at 9th), Berkeley
02:02 pm - oh dear
kung-fu != karate
they realize that, don't they?
01:46 pm - MySQL access in LispWorks Common Lisp
Art Obrezan is a CL newbie, so what did he put together for some practice? A MySQL library that implements the protocol directly and has no external dependencies. He even put together his own SHA1 implementation for the task. Nice job, Art!
It doesn't use ASDF because it's too formidable
. It doesn't need to be,
just follow my
simple guide.
01:11 pm - fiddling
I'm toying with a proof-of-concept web app for anonymizing pictures by pixelizing them. Here's an example. Can you figure out who the person in the picture is?
You can drag around the pixely part.
Without viewing source, can you guess how it works? I'll give you a negative hint: no HTML canvas or plugins involved. Don't read the comments if you don't want to see a spoiler...
Dec. 22nd, 2009
06:12 pm - greece
my dearest travel companions,
i wish for you safe travels and many adventures!
i can't wait to see your photos!
next year, i'm so there.
love,
.:m
02:57 pm - My Holiday Wish For All, Damnit
Hi there.
As snowflakes fall on happy little upturned faces and the wassail bowl is flung down decked halls, our minds turn inevitably to how everything is going to hell on hot greased rails. Therefore, here's my holiday wish for the world:
1. Spend less time raging at the extremes, trolls, and obviously manufactured non-issues you see on the television. Shun Sarah Palins, ACORNs, that crazy thing about the President dad sent in email, and Michael Moore. Almost none of it matters, and the people repeating it have no love for you.
2. Instead, look around where you live. Find out what's right and wrong with your town and your neighborhood. Look up who runs things and get to know those people better. Find the local charities and political action groups and see what can be fixed or encouraged locally. It's way harder to be BS'd when you can see what's happening, and way more rewarding to see change.
3. Pay more attention to your local political representatives and their opponents. Encourage what's good and discourage what's bad to them, early and often. It's the best way to deal with the pain of #1.
4. Lose an argument now and then. No, really.
Ho ho ho,![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
substitute
boredDec. 21st, 2009
04:06 pm - Mechanical turking
I tried out Mechanical Turk, and it's pretty neat.
When I got to the end of the task creation process, it showed a window with realtime updates in it. That's neat. I wonder why it's realtime? I thought it would be more of a batch process where I'd come back and check it in a few days.
Instead, as I watched, people picked up and finished all 48 of my tasks within a few minutes. The realtime nature was a surprise, and pretty neat.
It was more expensive than I expected because I accidentally had two workers perform each task, and I set the pay rate pretty high. Even so, it was less than $10. I'm going to use this more in the future and try to tune my requests a little better.
10:46 am - On the first night of Birthmas
Today is Alice's birthday! This is a very important thing. Alice is one of my closest friends ever. We met the first week of school at Syracuse University. We had several things in common: we were both theatre majors (which is WHY we met), we were both much shorter than average, and we both had Birthmas birthdays. We had other things in common (many) but I don't know when we figured the rest out.
Birthmas was actually coined by Alice, and any of you that have, or know of anyone that has, a late December birthday knows what I'm talking about. It is probably the worst time to have a birthday. Christmas (and Hanukkah) is all about the giving of gifts (ok, no, I know, it's about peace and goodwill, and brotherhood of man, when you're a kid, it's all about the loot). What happens when you have a birthday right around Christmas, is that you get presents that are BOTH a Christmas AND a birthday present. The thing is, that bike, you would have gotten it for one or the other had your birthday been in June, but because it's not, there's this attitude that everyone has of, "I'll spend a little tiny bit more than I might have, and get you this, but it will be for both presents." As a kid, it's really depressing. The friends who are close enough that you buy gifts for on their birthday and on Christmas? They give you one gift to cover two holidays. It makes sense, people are already spending so much buying things for so many different people that the idea of buying EXTRA for someone seems too much.
It's not fun. Alice understands. We were in this together, and that is why, 23 years ago, when Alice and I were sharing an apartment in Boston, we decided to throw a party. Not just any party, but a Birthmas Party. Since her Birthday is at the beginning of Birthmas, and mine is later, we had to do something REALLY BIG!! And that's what let to The Twelve Nights of Birthmas!
We partied for 12 nights, starting on Alice's birthday (the 21st and ending on New Years Day. There was a different theme for every night. There was a dance party (where we played music that we loved when we lived in London) there was a tree trimming night (which I think would have been the first night, and as we've yet to trim our tree, I think we will get to do that tonight), there was a night to make cookies, I remember that New Years Eve was a sleepover, but the night that I remember the most, was the 23rd. That was caroling.
Lots of people came and went during those 12 days and nights. Some came for many nights others a few, and others only one.
Caroling, that the was the one that stays, because that was the one that Scott came to. That. Was our first date. We were the most eclectic group that night. We had a friend of mine who's a hard of hearing dwarf in a wheelchair, who was being pushed by another friend of mine who has CP and was using the wheelchair to give her something to lean on while she walked, and Alice walked in front of the two of them, backwards and signing the songs. It was quite awesome. Scott was the only male, and he was a real sport about the whole thing. We wound up walking all around our block, singing the whole time. We were too nervous to actually knock on any doors, and we saw no one! But, we had a great time!
The next year, on the 23rd again, Scott and I were already engaged (we were married -the first time- one year, one month, and one day after that first date), and this time we went caroling with many more people. I think that might have been the start of having them at Scott's mom's house. We would start at her house, then all pour into my cargo van (not safe at all, don't do this at home, I had only the front two seats, the rest of the gang was in the back on the floor) and we would go to various places that she knew would appreciate us.
We have gone caroling every year since that first time. Even when we were on the road, one of our friends (who had been out caroling with us back in the days we still lived in the Boston area) volunteered their house and we had a huge crowd of friends going door to door.
Since moving to California, except for the year on the road, the event has been located at my folks house. There has always been pizza, hot chocolate, and cookies. Every year. Since the beginning. These days, we sometimes remember to dress up in scarves and hats (very silly here in the warm clime in which we live), but we pretty much stay in the house. My parent's next door neighbor is one of those people who do a spectacular job of lighting their house for the holidays, so we go over there and sing to them so that we can say we did go out to sing. We used to do the whole neighborhood, but mostly now we are singing for ourselves. But, we do sing. We sit around in a circle, we have books, we have candles, and we sing every Christmas/Hanukkah song we know.
In two years, Alice and I are trying to figure out a way to do all of The Twelve Nights of Birthmas again for the 25 anniversary. It will have to be something spectacular, because it has to compete with a twenty five year old memory.
But this year, on the 23rd it will be the 23rd anniversary of Scott and my first date, and of our first year of caroling together that fist year of birthmas. There will be pizza, there will be hot chocolate, there will be LOTS of cookies and baked things and there will be singing. Lots and lots of singing.
Last night, to welcome the start of the Birthmas season, Scott, Sky (and her friend Raven) and I went to see Up in the Air, which we all loved. Clooney is a treasure. He's always a joy to watch. I didn't know either of the females, but they both presented deep three-dimensional characters that generated real emotional reactions. It was a wonderful portrait of a lifestyle and the man who lived it. I wish I hadn't been as good at knowing what was going to happen, since there were things that I figured were likely to happen before they did, and I was pretty much right every time. But I don't think Scott called them all, so I think it's my problem as much as the movie's. It made for some interesting discussions afterwards. I don't want to say too much because I don't want to spoil the movie for anyone. I would like to see it again, it's definitely one of those films that would be enhanced by at least a second viewing.
Today is Winter Solstice, it is the shortest day of the year, and the first day of winter, and it is Alice's birthday. To celebrate, Winter and I are having breakfast together and then off to shopping. Sky went to a Yule party last night, Winter's going to a solstice one tonight. Sky is hoping to have friends over to have her own solstice gathering, and I'm expecting to have a friend over to watch Christmas episodes of TV shows.
But. In honor of Alice's birthday, and the start of Birthmas, I will also make sure that the tree finally gets trimmed. Holiday music will be played. Eventually Alice's present will make it to her (she sent me THE COOLEST HANUKKAH PRESENT, which I am still in awe of how she knew I wanted it, without having any clue that I did!!).
So, happy birthday Alice.
Happy solstice everyone.
Happy WINTER!!
As a first night of Birthmas (and in honor of Alice's birthday and her Hanukkah present to us) have you seen this yet?
09:03 am - BUNRAISER
Continuing with the Content of Others: The 30 Second Bunnies Present HELLRAISER
sleepyDec. 20th, 2009
07:43 pm - Additional animal-related levity in place of upcoming serious content
full02:06 pm - searching fail
I need two things and can't find them online. What gives?
1. An extremely basic introductory tutorial on how to use Photoshop C4 for Mac. You'd think there'd be a ton available online but I haven't found anything that's both free and basic. What's free seems to be specialty lessons for advanced users. I'd pay for a downloaded lesson, but I don't know what would be a good one to try.
2. The paperback series of the first fourteen Oz books by L. Frank Baum for Liana. All I'm finding on Amazon is a 15-Books-in-One edition, and the reviews suggest that it's sloppily printed with lots of mistakes because of the expired copyright. When I was a kid I had nicely bound individual paperback copies. I thought they'd be easy to find as a box set, but no.
Help!
Dec. 19th, 2009
03:51 pm - Keep Your Laser Handy
Briefing time
And the treason comes easy.
Mutation's spreading
And the Commies are nigh.
Your mission's failed
And Team Leader is crazy.
Confess, Troubleshooter,
before you die.
One of these mornings
You're gonna wake up screaming.
Then they'll decant you
So your next clone can try.
But until that morning
When you're finally terminated,
Friend Computer is here
to ask you: why?
------
For consideration: apologies to George Gershwin
Dec. 17th, 2009
11:27 pm - elephant talk
Italian rock musician sings in "English" that works about as well as the real thing. via
33mhz sleepy10:34 am - Tis the season for Lisp games
I heard about three new Lisp-powered games this week.
First is a "silly geodefense clone wannabe," Towers:
Next is David O'Toole's 7-day roguelike Sanctuary:
And last is Andy Hefner's untitled space game:
Navigate: (Previous 20 Friends)