The Antisocial Blog

Nature Academy

2011-08-14T10:32:00.000-07:00

In addition to exploring Blender on my own, I've been attending an online class called The Nature Academy, put on by Andrew Price of Blender Guru. I'm generally reluctant to pay for a structured course of learning, preferring to learn on my own, from found sources, at my own pace. But I took a chance on this offering, in part because of the previous work of Andrew with respect to Blender grass, but also because of his startling results showcased in the trailer for the course.

So I gambled, and paid up, and joined the inaugural students.

As it turns out, The Nature Academy is absolutely 100% "oh wow". Or rather, "OMFG that's sweet!" I've actually, literally laughed out loud with delight, seeing a technique explained and then replicating it myself.

The course is well organized, well attended, with great materials, insightful techniques and surprising tricks, and really neat results from the participants. Andrew pitches the class as saving one the huge amount of time required to mess around with Blender settings to find out what works. And it is that. But it's also chock full of content that I'd NEVER stumble across on my own. For example, Blender compositing nodes had previously been completely opaque to me, alien and scary and something that I'd decided to just skip. But now, after a few sessions using them in The Nature Academy, I deeply appreciate the value (necessity even!) of composite nodes, and am not so reluctant to use them.

So the class is a wonderful combination of time-saving insights and enlightening new techniques. The production values are high, and despite a few minor hiccups in the course materials, everything has gone very very smoothly overall.

Totally worth the money. In fact, the first tutorial alone, on photorealistic grass, was worth the entire course fee, to me. The rest is just added awesomeness; each new week's lesson, posted on Wednesday, is like a present.

Here are some of my homework assignments so far:

Grass. I did the lesson's basic field of grass:

...but found that kind of boring (though aesthetically pleasing), and stopped before I got to the compositing. I took the grass methods, and the new compositing techniques, in a different direction, and created this:

The sand gave me trouble at first, but I figured that out. Not bad for week 1!

Weeks 3 and 4 were trees and plants respectively. Here's a basic tree, plopped down on the grass from week 1:

After playing with palm trees and creeping vines, I did this, yesterday:

It's got the background compositing that I learned earlier, plus some depth of field blurring. And of course the sand and tufts of grass from before. Sweet!

Next up, lakes complete with reflections, reeds, lily pads, and fog.

Project Bill - Egypt

2011-08-13T14:04:00.000-07:00

I've been playing with Blender again. Instead of a farm theme, this time I've been sorting out props and scenery for ancient Egypt.

I've been playing with amphorae and other pottery, Egyptian columns, chariots, Khepera beetles, scorpions, hieroglyphs, different stone materials, blown sand, statues, bamboo scaffolding, and Blender's nifty Fracture script. And lighting; lots of playing around with lighting, which is both deeply complicated, and really breaks or makes a scene.

So, below are a few scenes I've been playing with. Click on the small images to view full size.

The first is a view of a room and hallway. It's notable for the hieroglyphs that wrap around the arch, for the scaffolding and ladders, for the light and shadow, for the sand drift, and for the broken statue and fallen rubble in the hallway.

The second scene is some sort of big platform with a sarcophagus, guardian statues, and a circular well going...somewhere. Here I was playing with blown sand, with stone textures, with hieroglyphics, and (mainly) with light and shadow.

Here's another perspective, same model, different lighting.

And finally, a lantern, resting on the sand.

Fun!

Wolverines!

2011-05-29T15:44:00.000-07:00

No, not that kind of wolverine. Not that kind, either.

In 1984, Red Dawn, a war movie starring Patrick Swayze and Charlie Sheen, followed a group of high-school student guerilla fighters resisting the Cuban and Soviet invasion of the American midwest. The guerillas called themselves Wolverines, after their high school sports mascot. Nope, not that kind of wolverine, either.

Let me back up a bit.

Years ago, we bought some property outside of town, not too close but not too far, 1.6 acres at the peak site of a planned development. It was to be a short-term investment property, and we financed the $120K with a balloon payment mortgage.

Plans changed, and we held on to the property. The balloon payment approached, and the lender, completely unsolicited, offered to extend the mortgage for another few years. Sweet. That was easy.

Fast forward a few years, to 2011, and the (extended once) balloon payment was soon to come due again. We went to a local bank to see about refinancing. After having a look at our exemplary credit history, they were only to happy to accept our business. We signed some papers, and presto! That was eas...whoops, hang on a second. SIT YER ASS DOWN.

The appraisal came back for $125K. But, BUT, the bank would only loan up to 70% of the appraised value. Something about the current economic climate, people defaulting on mortgages, banks being over aggressive in lending. It sounded vaguely familiar. So they wanted a bit over $30K for closing. Um, yeah. That wasn't going to work for us.

Something seemed fishy. I knew that valuations were down, but this still didn't seem right, given that we'd talked to a local realtor about a year ago, and they'd said then that they could sell it for $185K, give or take.

I asked the bank whether they were sure of their appraiser:

(REDACTED),

This is an odd question, but are you sure that the appraiser identified the lot correctly? When I talked to him, he sounded pretty clueless, unable to navigate, seemingly unaware of how to use a map or public land records.

That doesn't mean that he erred, but it does make me wonder whether he just went through the motions, or was truly diligent. I'd hate to be faced with this problem of appraised value because of something that he did or didn't do, or didn't do well.

I'm not sure that that concern is directly relevant to you, or whether there's anything that you could do about it now, anyhow. But I thought that I'd pass on the misgivings that I had when I talked to him before the appraisal. He didn't present well at all.

Then I took a closer look at the appraisal, and noticed to my horror and delight that the appraiser had apparently appraised a site that wasn't even our property. The pictures that he'd attached were of a common area of the development, a sunny, cleared, grassy field that was reserved and unbuildable for all time.

I politely pointed this out to the bank, and questioned the appraiser's degree of inbreeding:

Thanks, (REDACTED).

I appreciate your input, and that you've gone to bat for us. We'll definitely check with the current servicer, and consider your other suggestions too.

With respect to the appraiser, it's important to see that his pictures on page 17, "Subject Photo Addendum", are not in fact pictures of our property. The second picture, labeled "Street", is of the road to the property, and I understand that. But the picture labeled "Subject" is definitely not ours. It's a common area, adjacent to our property, that's not buildable, and that doesn't have most of the characteristics of our plot. The picture he took is facing parallel to our property, and is of a vacant grassy area with an unexceptional view. Our property is to the right of that picture, higher elevation, wooded, with a dramatic ridgeline and a stellar view of the valley. It's the pinnacle site of the subdivision.

This difference could be a big one, if you look at the comparables and how he references them. He puts our property as being worth 50K less than Comparable 1, (REDACTED), just on the grounds that (REDACTED) has a better view. If he's basing that 50K difference on a misunderstanding of our lot location and attributes, then that single error is potentially causing our whole problem.

Put another way, our property might be closer to (REDACTED) in value than he estimates. He appears to be using mediocre view or no-view comps, predominantly, including for his comps 4 and 5. Comparable 4, in particular, (in the same subdivision) has no view at all, yet is called out by the appraiser as being the best and closest comparison point. If a great view is worth up to 50K, then our lot should be worth what comp 4 is worth, plus another 30-50K.

Again, I'm not sure if you can do anything at this point anyhow. I expect that the appraiser will dig in and deny any wrongdoing or adjustment, if pressed further. And, knowing that he's previously committed to a sloppy valuation, he's going to make sure that he defends it, and makes a plausible story out of what's always been an imprecise estimation game. He's committed, now.

But I assert that, if he had been more careful originally about identifying the property, and had considered the actual characteristics better, he might have arrived at a valuation that was higher, fairly and accurately and on his own, and saved us all a lot of effort.

At any rate, I'm not at all happy with the appraiser I just paid for, and since he's your contractor, you deserve to know why.

That got their attention. They said that they'd get a different appraiser, on their dime.

But, a couple days later, they instead decided that the original appraiser was going to go back to the site, with me, and correct any error.

This was an interesting choice, and one that presented me with a great deal of stress. I was going to have to confront this guy, and try to extract what I wanted, during a brief no-repeats-allowed moment of verbal combat.

Before the appointment, I went up to the property with my wife, walked it, and made sure that I was right. I was. The site was gorgeous, sun-dappled, perfectly quiet and magical. It was not in fact a flat, open, grassy field.

The next week, I took time off of work, and frantically drove the 30 minutes to the site, arriving precisely at the allotted time. I'd brought an extra pair of boots, figuring that the appraiser wouldn't be equipped for a walk through mud and brambles to the peak of the site. I'd also been mentally rehearsing what I'd say, and how I'd react, what I should and shouldn't do.

I waited at the property. 15 minutes, and he didn't show. I tried my cell phone: no service. I drove down to the entrance of the development, checked there to see if he was waiting in a car. No one. Drove back up to the property. Waited another 10 minutes. No show. I drove back down again, stopping and trying my cell every 50 yards, until I got a weak signal. I called the appraiser. When he answered and I identified myself and asked where he was, he said, "oh, the bank never confirmed the appointment, so I figured that it was off. I'm still at the office". With surprising calm I rescheduled for the next day.

On the drive home, after a few minutes of seething, I pulled to the side of the road, called the bank, and let them have a small taste of my displeasure with the appraiser. They were horrified that he hadn't showed, and affirmed that they'd confirmed the appointment with him.

The next day I was back, two pairs of boots and all, and met the appraiser at the allotted time. He was waiting for me at the property. He had suitable footware. And, indeed, he had mis-identified the site, he admitted.

We walked the real property, and I described the features that I felt differentiated it. He took pictures from the correct location, then followed me to one of the comparison sites (comp 4, in the same development), where he also took pictures and talked to me about the differentiating features. All told, he spent a careful 45 minutes, being both friendly and receptive. He was professional, ethical, entirely not what I expected.

When he left, I switched off the record function on my iPhone. You just never know when you'll need that sort of thing.

In short order, the revised appraisal valued the property at $160K. That was workable!

Finally, we could (and did) close the refinance.

But, that wasn't the end of things. You see, I'd stepped in poison oak when we visited the property.

Despite being careful with clothing, segregating it and washing it twice, I soon felt a burning itch on both forearms. Musta touched the contaminated blue jeans. I treated it with cortizone cream. It got worse. I treated it with Benadryl. It got worse. Soon both forearms were aflame, and the only thing that'd help was very hot water.

It sucked.

When I'd stepped in the poison oak, I'd been wearing my leather boots that I use for motorcycling, not my cheap-o rubber boots. See, the rubber boots were in the back of the car in case the appraiser needed something to wear.

So, SO, I had a pair of boots that was no doubt coated in this evil shit (urushiol, the active ingredient is called), but made of leather, and unwashable.

I took a bottle of Tecnu and a roll of paper towels, and some bright yellow elbow-length kitchen gloves, and gingerly began to clean the boots in the carport. The laces came out and were laundered. Then I swabbed and swabbed the boot exteriors with Tecnu, being painfully careful to dispose of the towels, and not get any itchy death on myself.

When I was finished, I took the boots inside. But I had doubts.

Poison oak causes reactions in the nanogram range. And I just couldn't imagine that even a roll of paper towels and a bottle of Tecnu had cleaned all that shit off.

My arms were still getting worse. I was taking two very hot showers a day to function. I thanked my lucky stars that I hadn't managed to expose my crotch to this fiery hell.

I looked at my arms. Then I looked at my "clean" boots. Then my arms. Then the boots.

Fuck it. The boots were gonna get thrown out, and $100 be damned. I'd buy a new urushiol-free pair. I say we take off and nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

I went online to look for a replacement pair of boots. But I couldn't be sure of the precise model of my condemned pair; the inner label had worn off. Shit! I love those boots!

On the manufacturer's site, I noticed a FAQ about cleaning. Maybe they'd have suggestions for urushiol. Like, "burn 'em", heh.

The cleaning instructions were brief and superficially unhelpful:

"On a regular basis, brush away any surface dirt with a soft brush." Fuckin' great, yeah, that'll help.

"After extended, rugged use, wash with mild soap and warm water. Be sure to rinse all soap off as it is hydrophilic." Heh, yeah, tha...well, wait a minute. That means that they can tolerate soap and water. Huh.

I grabbed the boots with a paper towel for protection, and headed for the washing machine. "Sorry guys", I said, and in they went. I set the load size to max, cranked it to HOT/WARM cycle, extra rinse, and dumped in a full-load amount of our eco-friendly soap.

As the washer filled, I poked them beneath the suds with a stick. Then I closed the lid on my sorry experiment.

Here's the thing. Either they were going in the trash without further preamble, or they were getting washed (and then, most likely, thrown in the trash in pieces). Unless, just maybe, somehow they'd survive the abuse, and still be useable.

Ater one cycle, there was no spontaneous disassembly. Wow.

I set the machine to a second, hot, extra-rinse cycle, with more soap. And then a third cool-water full wash cycle, with no soap, but still with an extra rinse.

Them fuckers were going to be CLEAN. I was not going to get urushiol on my riding suit, in my gloves, in my eyes, or on my pecker or pucker.

The washing machine stopped. The boots were whole, if a bit sorry looking. There appeared to be no loose stitching at all.

The manufacturer's drying instructions said to "Open footwear fully, remove the insole and laces and dry at room temperature. Never expose to heat!" So I did just that, leaving the boots to slowly dry on the concrete basement floor.

Then yesterday, I went to the new Cabela's store here in town to get some leather care goo. Cabela's is way cool. They have a great selection of new-in-box long and hand guns, and this neat section off to the side called the "Gun Library" where they have comfy chairs, dim lighting, and older, used, very valuable guns under glass. It's a bit like a smoking room, but full of $8K shotguns, old Walter PPKs, that sort of thing.

Oh, right. The boots. I got some Obenauf's Heavy Duty LP goop, a beeswax and oil preparation, at Cabela's.

At home, I started slathering the OHDLP on the boots, working it in to every bit of leather by hand. The waxy stuff melted as it got warm, and just oozed into the thirsty leather. After I'd completed one boot, the difference was obvious. The moistened leather was darker, back to original color, while the faded, parched over-washed leather looked almost as painful as my arms.

I did both boots, all the leather, until they stopped soaking up the stuff. During the process, I was able to confirm that, aside from a bit of obliterated cloth lining on the tongue, the boots appeared to be completely fine. Zero ripped leather, zero loose threading, no cracks, no damage worth mentioning. Moisturized, they looked nearly new.

Wow. Today, those boots look absolutely great, and still fit. Tough bastards.

They're Wolverine brand boots.

Fucking-A. Wolverines!

Arancello and the Orange Creamsicle

2011-03-25T17:28:00.000-07:00

Encouraged by my results making Limoncello, I created a second batch with exactly the same process, but using orange peels. Ta-da, arancello.

It's not quite as magically sip-able as the limoncello, but it's a core ingredient in this delicious mixed drink that turns childhood on its ear:

Orange Creamsicle

1 oz arancello (my rocket fuel version, 100 proof)
2 oz half and half (or cream, or whole milk)
1-2 drops vanilla extract

Shake violently with a couple crushed ice cubes until very very very cold and slushy (or just blend it), and serve, ice splinters and all, in a rocks glass.

Yum!

While fiddling with the 'cello mixed drinks, I also discovered an incredible limoncello-based lemonade cocktail:

Limonade

1 oz limoncello (my rocket fuel version, 100 proof)
4 oz Newman's Lemonade (actually that's "Newman's Own Old Fashioned Roadside Virgin Lemonade", but who the hell names a product with 6 consecutive adjectives, or with the phrase "Roadside Virgin"?)

Serve over lots of ice in a highball glass with a bendy straw.

The aromatic aspects of this drink are really a cut above, because of the different but wholly complementary lemon extracts in both the limoncello and the Newman's Lemonade. Wowzers!

Limoncello

2011-01-05T17:12:00.000-08:00

Over the holidays, I usually make a bunch of food as gifts. It seems more meaningful than the alternative, and it's certainly lots more fun.

This year it was ginger mint habanero hot sauce, rum cakes, applewood smoked turkey, sweet and spicy barbeque brisket, chocolate-coated rum balls, and peppermint bark (using white chocolate made properly with cocoa butter, which it turns out is surprisingly difficult to find and fuck-all expensive).

...and a first for me, limoncello. Which turned out wonderfully.

There are gobs of recipes for the stuff to be found online; it's Italy's national drink and has as many different regional interpretations as Americans have for barbeque. Nearly anyone you ask will proclaim their recipe to be the most grandmothers-of-grandmothers authentic, as well as the tastiest.

I spent a considerable amount of time wandering through limoncello recipes, getting a feel for the universally simple ingredients (lemons, alcohol, water, sugar) and wildly varying methods (4-day to 80-day soaks, triple or quadruple filtering, chilling or heating, using vodka, grain alcohol or combinations of the two, adding a variety of different amounts of water and sugar, and adding the syrup or water either before or after steeping and straining).

The end products varied from 25% to 50% alcohol, depending upon the recipe, giving them an aura somewhere between sweet lemon liqueur and citrus rocket fuel.

I decided that I wanted high octane, yet simple.

Here's what I went with, for my first attempt:

750 ml grain alcohol (for example "Everclear", which is 95% ethanol. You can get this non-shelf item by asking for it at liquor stores in Oregon.)
10 large, thick-skinned lemons

3.5 cups white sugar
2 cups water

2 cleaned vodka bottles with good screw caps

Wash the lemons with dish soap, and rinse with tons of water. Rub dry with a clean kitchen towel.

Using a vegetable peeler (not a zester), remove the zest of all the lemons in large pieces. Use a paring knife to cut, scrape, and otherwise remove all traces of the white pith from the zest. Discard the pith. Juice the lemons and keep the juice for some other purpose. This may indirectly help free up the necessary vodka bottles over the coming two weeks.

Dump the zest and the alcohol in a half-gallon or bigger glass jar with a lid. Shake to combine. Leave the lemon zest steeping for at least two weeks on the kitchen counter, agitating occasionally while working at emptying the necessary vodka bottles. Over time, the pieces of zest should turn pale, and brittle, while the alcohol turns a beautiful yellow.

Strain the alcohol into a large glass container. Use a coffee filter if you have it (I didn't, so I used a mesh strainer instead). Better filtering equals a more ethereal final product, but I expect that it all tastes the same.

Heat the sugar and water in a large saucepan, stirring, until it boils and turns clear. Allow it to cool below 78 C (the boiling point of ethanol).

Add the cooled sugar syrup (which should be almost exactly 750 ml) to the lemony alcohol (which is also still 750 ml). Stir well.

Bottle into cleaned vodka bottles with good screw caps. Makes two high-octane 750 ml bottles that are approximately 100 proof (50% alcohol). Put one in the freezer, and the other on the shelf.

Serve (for sipping) ice cold in a shot glass, espresso cup, sake thimble, or other demitasse. Or use as a mixer to make better lemon drop martinis next time.

This is a mighty tasty recipe, that definitely has the rocket fuel zing that I was going for. Yet it's smooth and eminently sip-able.

The recipe is interesting in a few ways because of the chemistry going on. Azeotropes, invert syrups, and some solubility and food science tricks.

First, the extraction of essential oils from the lemon peel is mostly because of the ethyl alcohol; there's only a trace amount of water in the alcohol because of azeotropic issues, and the water/sugar syrup is added only after the peels are removed. So, no water to speak of for the extraction. If vodka were used, then more of the lemon's water-soluable elements would have been pulled into the solvent.

Second there's about as little water available in the final mix as is possible, given the demands for sweetness. The simple syrup is essentially a saturated sugar solution.

Third, the sugar solution has, from heating, partially converted from sucrose (the table sugar) to fructose and glucose. It's this conversion that makes the 2:1 solubility of table sugar in water possible; 2 parts sucrose will not dissolve in 1 part water. But two parts fructose/glucose will! The result is a partially invert syrup, that has a very low water activity, won't spoil quickly, and is considerably sweeter than a saturated sucrose solution would be.

Add the thick invert syrup to the nearly waterless ethyl alcohol and its lemony solute, and you've got something that won't freeze, that's viscous, that's very sweet, that's shelf-safe for many months, and that's half ethanol. It's like a drink without the water. Maybe "lemon drop concentrate", if it had some acid.

There's a predictable down side. Drinking it straight makes you thirsty because of the osmotic gradient. That lack of water in my limoncello translates into a need for a water mixer, or a water chaser.

Better living through chemistry!

Project Bill - Breakfast

2010-12-05T15:11:00.000-08:00

I had a leftover potato cake and some fried eggs for breakfast. Mmmm, gooey! The eggs were the last in the carton, and I went to go put it in the recycling. But I stopped, and looked at the carton for a bit, before taking it upstairs with me to the computer.

I started from scratch. Here's the result:

And inside:

It's still missing side stickers proclaiming it "Certified Humane", and "No fertilizers, pesticides, explosives, or catapults used in the farming of these eggs". Maybe I'll add those later. Also the label says brown eggs, but the ones I put in it were white. /shrug

Project Bill - Bags

2010-12-04T16:13:00.000-08:00

Fiddling around today, I created a pallet of bags, special delivery on a pallet from Acme. With just a swap of textures, they become storage for either fertilizer:

or quicklime:

Nifty. Those ought to come in handy for Farmer Bill.

Toeing the Line Between Genius and Idiocy

2010-11-25T11:29:00.000-08:00

I got up at 7:30 this morning (IDIOCY) to put a turkey in the smoker (GENIUS) so that it'd be ready for Thanksgiving dinner. The turkey has been soaking in a honey-maple brine (GENIUS) since Tuesday, unrefrigerated (IDIOCY), in a plastic dog food container (IDIOCY) in our garage, because I noticed that the garage is precisely as cold as a refrigerator (GENIUS), and the dog food container is just the right size for a 14 pound turkey and 2 gallons of brine (GENIUS).

The smoker has been recklessly modified (IDIOCY) to hold a precise steady temperature (GENIUS), as previously described. I loaded it with applewood chips, and some boiling water in the drip pan. I used boiling water so that I wasn't introducing a huge (cold) thermal mass that'd fight the smoker's heating element (GENIUS).

It took a while to get going, and the smoker stubbornly refused to go past 180F. Perhaps this was because it's outside in the car port, where the ambient temperature is 36F (IDIOCY). I decided that the smoker was losing heat to the environment too quickly, and the heating element couldn't keep up (GENIUS).

I grabbed one of my wife's fitted sheets (IDIOCY) from the rag pile (GENIUS). It fit around the smoker perfectly, affixed with a document clip (GENIUS), but was awfully close to the red hot heating element (IDIOCY). I decided to leave it in place (IDIOCY), but pulled it out a bit at the bottom to reduce the chance that it'd burst into flames and ignite our car and house.

After watching it for half an hour, I was pleased to notice that my impromptu BBQ blanket was working perfectly. The smoker was holding steady at 225F (GENIUS), and hadn't burst into flames.

I went for a walk, leaving my swaddled Frankenstein unattended (IDIOCY). When I checked it later, it remained perfectly stable (GENIUS). I took a picture.

Join the TSA

2010-11-24T12:19:00.000-08:00

I've consistently said that I'm a big fan of the TSA. Their activities are necessary to make us all feel as if we're safe, and to ensure that we preserve our way of life in the face of slavering wolverines who want to disrupt our trusting, happy, prosperous American way of life. TSA is working hard to preserve what makes America great, and I'm all for that, even if it means destroying some of our less important rights as human beings.

But I hadn't actually considered becoming a TSA agent until I saw this picture:

For the unworldly (or un-Underworld-ly), that's Kate Beckinsale about to be molested by the TSA to make sure that she's not a threat to her fellow passengers.

You know, Kate Beckinsale. Esquire's 2009 "Sexiest Woman Alive".

I'm clearly in the wrong line of work. I could be wearing a kilt and infringing upon Kate's rights as a human being to make people feel safer, instead of creating tools for understanding the human mind.

I appreciate her courage in opting out of the scanner. But her vacant "I'm not here; this isn't happening to me" stare in the airport picture above is a haunting contrast to her "look at me with lust" expression on the Esquire cover and photoshoot.

And that right there is the big difference between voluntary and involuntary, between sex symbol and sexual assault victim.

Qik

2010-11-23T18:39:00.000-08:00

I discovered a new fun trick with my iPhone, using an application and web service called Qik.

I downloaded the app for $3 from the iTunes Store, and signed up for a free account at qik.com.

A bit of easy configuration, and poof, I'm able to automatically upload videos from my phone to the Qik servers as I record. Streaming video for cheap!

The link to my Qik account is here, and the embedded (real-time) stream is below. Of course, it'll show earlier videos unless I happen to be streaming a file exactly when you're looking at it. But, previous recordings are available at the account link above.

One less-obvious use of this sort of digital trickery is as a remote backup for video that you're afraid might be confiscated. I found a reference to this neato use in the online discussions of the people organizing NOOD, the National Opt-Out Day, which is tomorrow. It's awfully hard for TSA to delete video from a confiscated iPhone when it's being streamed to a remote location as it's recorded!

Keep 'em honest.

A Kilt

2010-11-19T07:51:00.000-08:00

I've been looking for a nice kilt recently. I'm tending to like the more understated version, as in the picture to the left.

Utilikilts is an interesting option. Not traditional, and this seems to annoy the Scots. There are some comments about their quality being sub-standard.

But I like the look of their original, in black.

Then there's Heritage of Scotland, more traditional.

Did you know that there are leather kilts? Huh. Expensive bastards.

The options from Sport Kilt also seem compelling, and cheap! I like their Hiking Kilt. The Tiger Stripe Commando Kilt? Not so much.

Nothing at Kilts Direct jumps out at me yet, but I'm looking there, too.

Why the sudden interest? I do not suffer fools gladly. If you're not angry, you're not paying attention.

Project Bill - Farm Explosion

2010-11-14T16:12:00.001-08:00

Here's a quick (and crude) test of VFX and SFX overlaid on a farmyard render.

No particular attention was paid to the sync of visuals and audio, nor are there shadows, nor efforts to refine transparency of the smoke. I'm not even sure whether the particular effects are ones that I like. But, it was really easy to slap together, and the results are certainly promising.

Gummi Explosion

2010-11-13T16:49:00.001-08:00

On the way back from the gym today, I was going to stop at Fred Meyer for some gummi candies. We're more than a little addicted to the Haribo brand, and we were totally out. Not acceptable.

But Freddies only carries the bears and the regular cola gummis, and I had a hankering for the fizzy cola gummis. That meant Cost Plus World Market, out by Valley River Center. They're quite a bit more expensive, though, $1.79 a package instead of $1.09.

It was miserable weather, and I was tired, and it was getting dark, and there was the price premium, and...and...I really wanted the good stuff. So off to Cost Plus I went.

As I was considering their selection, I noticed a tiny little sign to the lower right: Haribo 5 for $5. Whot!? I apparently had the incredible luck to arrive on the next to last day of a 45% off sale on just exactly the brand I wanted. There was some funny small print, though: "must purchase in groups of 5 to receive discount".

Huh.

I loaded 15 bags of Haribo goodness into my basket, and headed straight for the checkout.

They rang up for a total of $17.16. After a period of tricky mental calculations, I decided that this was probably not $1 each times 15.

I asked to see the register tape. The checker and I perused it, and determined that there were only...yep, you guessed it, 14 bags.

I quickly said, "hang on a second", and dashed for the candy aisle. Another fizzy cola bag returned with me to the register.

The additional bag of gummis was scanned, and the register thought about it for a second. The new total was $15 even, meaning that they were paying me $2.16 to take the extra bag home.

Of course, when I got home, there were...16 bags of gummis in my shopping bag.

Hehe.

Turns out that the checker had miscounted, not me. I'd like to say that I'll drive all the way back out there and return that 5 oz bag. But those fizzy cola gummis are awfully tasty, and it's dark and cold outside.

Project Bill - Pasture

2010-11-08T12:31:00.000-08:00

An example Blender render of Bill, cows, pigs, a barbed wire fence, and a autumnal tree on a somewhat over-grazed pasture. The tree is modeled using flat (billboard) leaves with transparency. The grass is created using the Blender particle system. The grass density is determined by weight painting. Click for a bigger version.

Another angle, by moonlight.

Project Bill - Rigging

2010-11-07T10:44:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I decided to tackle one of the hardest aspects of Blender: rigging and skinning. It turns out that this process of making a model (like Bill) articulated and able to be moved and animated is generally much more frustrating than modeling, and second only to actual animation in its ability to make grownups cry.

Luckily there are some good examples and starting points available from the Blender community, and I'd fiddled around a bit with farm animals before (yeah, yeah, I know). But rigging a human, even a distorted cartoon human like Bill, was a whole new level of complexity.

First there is the "rig" or "armature", a collection of virtual bones and control surfaces that, when properly attached, can be used to deform and move a model.

They're powerful, detailed, and, when you first look at one, a pile of inscrutable chaos.

I imported an existing armature, and started scaling the bits and pieces of it to fit Bill. The hips, ribs, feet, hands, and major joints all had to line up. A single hand was complicated.

The face, well, that was plain scary complex.

When everything was more or less aligned, I saved everything, took a deep breath, and attached the armature to Bill's model.

Good things happened. Bill could move his legs!

But bad things happened, too. His feet were torn apart whenever he moved.

Similarly, his belly button was apparently host to at least one Alien youngster, judging by its tendency to rip open without warning.

And his face? His face it was best not to talk about.

Back to the literal and figurative drawing board. I explored the problems, went back to the armature, made some adjustments, searched for information online, made more changes, and attached the armature again.

The feet were still being mangled. The belly button was better, but now his thumbs seemed to want to bend backwards. And I still hadn't gotten to the face.

Lather, rinse, repeat. Hours passed.

In due course, the hands and feet and belly button were sorted. But I forgot to save at a critical juncture, and had to start over. Fixed them again, saved, and tackled the face.

Tried, failed. Tried again. Failed. Realized that my recent saves had all ensconced an error in method, that had to be discarded. Reverted all the way back to the Bill model before I imported the armature, and began yet again. Re-re-fixed the hands and feet and belly.

I resisted the urge to chew on my keyboard.

By now I was up to one file named "Bill highres 32 (eyes, applying modifiers, prep for rigging).blend" combined with another named "Bill rig attempt three 9.blend". I was getting pretty good at finding things that didn't work. The whole import-attach-hands-feet-belly fix process had been repeated, from scratch, way more than three times now.

But his head still seemed to want to detach when I rotated it, and his cheeks were still melted like butter. Back to online sources, and a few attempts at fixing the face.

Eventually, I found that a combination of selecting certain face bones and then pressing a button helpfully labeled "R", coupled with some careful movement of other face bones away from each other, unmelted the face.

Bill could now smile, grimace, chew, move his limbs and torso, and wiggle his belly suggestively without his skin coming off or turning inside-out.

He was still nude, though; the clothing didn't move with him. Neither did his eyeballs, for that matter.

But, progress! I saved my work.

It was getting late, but I knew that I was going to gain an extra hour at 2 am, so I grabbed a beer and pressed on.

I again tried attaching the clothing to Bill. Nope. He moved, it didn't.

Searched online, and discovered that I could attach the (rigid) hat to a single bone in the head of the armature. Presto, nude bill wore a hat, that moved with his head! The same method worked for the eyeballs, too, and suddenly Bill could follow things with his eyes.

Finally, in the wee hours, I discovered that Blender has a script for doing exactly what I wanted to do: attach a model (the clothing) to an armature using the nearness of that model to an existing pre-rigged model (that'd be Bill).

The script took a while to run, but worked perfectly for the shirt, overalls, and boots.

Yay! Everything was (crudely) working. Bill was rigged and skinned. He gave me a quirky smile while scrunching up his nose on one side.

I saved my work.

There's a lot of refinement still to do when I feel like it, and of course there's the whole actual animation thing to learn and do. But I learned a lot yesterday, and was delighted to push myself up a really steep learning curve. The view is nice from this first plateau.

Oh, and, yes, I do see that Bill's forehead is sticking through his hat in the pictures above. I'll fix it later!

UPDATE: video!

Introducing Project Bill

2010-10-27T22:30:00.000-07:00

Summer was a good excuse for not blogging, and that partly explains my recent dry spell. Too, diligent attention to exercise burns an hour a day that could otherwise be misspent. But there has also been a big creative project that I've been chipping away at in my spare time, that has tended to consume the hours that I'd otherwise use for blogging.

Project Bill, I'll call it, is still in the early stages where I'm unsure if or when it'll bear fruit. And some of the details are too early to reveal online. But I'm having a lot of fun working at it, and wanted to share some of the pieces.

I've been learning about Blender, an open-source 3D modeling application. It's a dazzlingly-complicated and capable tool, that's free, and with a vibrant online community of users. I started out reading back issues of BlenderArt Magazine, watching the incredible tutorials at Blender Cookie, Blender Guru, and Blender Newbies, frequently referring to the Blender 3D: Noob to Pro wikibook, browsing the forums at BlenderArtists, exploring the material settings at the Blender Open Material Repository, fiddling with the free models at Blend Swap, and then looping back through it all again as I learned more.

I began by simply viewing other people's models, moved on to importing and altering their models, and progressed to making some simple ones of my own. Then some more complicated stuff.

I'm still a crude hack compared to some of the talented Blenderheads out there (take for instance the animated shorts Big Buck Bunny and Sintel, both created by teams of talented Blender users, and a good example of what is possible with the application).

But I've learned a lot already. Check out this eyeball that I built from scratch and animated:

And of course, there's Bill himself:

I created the nude body from scratch using MakeHuman, then modeled his T-shirt and overalls completely from nothing more than a basic cube. Then Bill got a significant facelift (and I mean that literally) to move him away from realistic towards toon-like. Finally some boots and a hat, some cartoon shading, and...ta-da!

Some other odds and ends that I've been working on in Blender include a box of equipment from the legendary ACME corporation, plus a pallet. Both of these were built from scratch. Plus a pre-existing metal drum that I imported as a plain model, and then textured with a distressed metal look and warning labels.

And most recently animals, which started as pre-existing sorta-realistic models that I imported and greatly modified. They got toonish distortions of proportion, eyeballs, and animate-able expressions.

There's the pig:

The cow:

The goat:

The chicken:

And last but not least, a surprised-looking sheep, complete with rendered fleece:

Incredibly fun stuff.

Walmart Love

2010-07-29T11:55:00.000-07:00

This is the most disturbing thing that I'll see all day, I'm pretty sure.

It reminds me of the people in Wall-E...

...and fits into the general category of exercise motivation. I think that I'm gonna go grab some roasted vegetables and skinless chicken breast for lunch!

Mattress Twirlers

2010-07-08T15:14:00.000-07:00

As a young kid, in a horizon-broadening exercise dreamed up by my mother, I attended Sunday school in the attic of a local church. But I stopped going after the "Jesus Loves Me Incident".

One day we learned a particular hymn, "Jesus Loves Me". You might have heard or even sung the words:


Jesus loves me! This I know, 
for the Bible tells me so. 
Little ones to him belong; 
they are weak, but he is strong.

(Refrain)
Yes, Jesus loves me! Yes, Jesus loves me! 
Yes, Jesus loves me! The Bible tells me so.

etc.

This was an undeniably catchy tune, but I couldn't quite get past the first stanza without calling bullshit. The followup stanzas were lots worse, but let's stay narrowly focused, shall we?

I didn't yet get the whole bastardly concept of original sin, nor understand the indoctrination that comes with blind repetition. I'd never heard of viral thought. But this hymn was, even to a 4 or 5 year old, utter tripe. Even at that age I knew that I wasn't weak, and didn't belong to anyone nor need some heroic mythical entity to compensate for supposed feebleness or blanket unworthiness on my part.

Clearly this hymn was way out of whack with reality. I told my mother so, and that was the end of our Christianity experiment.

But that's not what I came here to talk about.

Anyone who persevered in Sunday school (any many who did not) will be able to tell you that the Christian God is a vengeful and angry God who don't take no shit from no one. He apparently mellowed a bit in later years with repeated re-authoring (much like Grimm's Fairy Tales), but that guy's just plain mean in the Old Testament. A great example of this is the Book of Exodus, wherein ten hideous plagues are visited upon the Egyptians to convince them to stop harshing on the Isrealites.

A good student of the Bible should be able to enumerate those ten plagues, perhaps even in chronological order:


Blood 
Frogs
Lice
Flies
Livestock Death
Boils
Hail
Locusts
Darkness
Death of the Firstborn

...but not many will be able to list the eleventh heretofore-unchronicled plague:


Mattress Store Sign Twirlers

As a student of various divinities, I am of course acutely aware of this eleventh plague and its various fiendish manifestations.

Until now, I'd assumed that averting ones eyes, refusing to ever patronize any store that supports such evil, and frequent, rigorous hand-washings were adequate defenses. But recent events have forced me to re-evaluate this strategy, and to go so far as consider ritual flagellation (for the twirlers, not for me. I'm fine, thanks.).

Along one of our major arteries, West 11th, the mattress stores have spread like herpes. They've sprung forth from vacant lots, latched on to strip mall entryways like limpets, and even displaced (by fire) my favorite pet store that once sold cute little chinchillas and had an owner with cigarette-ravaged skin and frizzy hair.

With them (the mattress stores, not the chinchillas) came the sign twirlers. And these were no amateur twirlers, no weekend Stereo Store acolytes. These were hardened, steely-eyed soldiers in the service of Evil.

They bounced, twirled, danced a spastic tarantella, leered, leaned out into traffic, tried to catch my eye.

I prayed for relief, bowed my head under the weight of the twirler's crudely-nailed signs, and stoically continued on.

I railed against them, glared, cursed their names and mothers, begged God to strike them down so that I might have a moment's relief.

But they endured. They taunted me along my sorry route, and I struggled to put one foot ahead of the next on my way to the gym.

I too was willing to endure. Until, that is, a mattress store replaced my favorite downtown fixture, the Mac Store. One day it was there, located in the heart of everything, a trusted landmark with smiling faces that I'd known for over a decade. The next day, gone! In the hollow shell that remained, a mattress store grew like a chancre. (No link. You're welcome.)

This aggression will not, stand, man.

It may be that the simplest solution to mattress store sign twirlers is the same one I suggested for the homeless. But I can't help but worry that these twirlers are a different breed, more feral, more dangerous, faster-breeding.

If homeless beggars are akin to bedraggled, malnourished, demented poodles, then a twirler is like...a pitbull. A half-shaved pitbull bitch, painted neon green and orange, forced to do a couple lines of coke, then given a big annoying sign and staked out on the sidewalk near traffic. Tough to ignore, and tougher to get by.

It's immensely difficult to approach these dogs without taking damage, and so an orderly harvest may be out of the question. I'm open to suggestions at this point.

Old and New

2010-05-26T15:28:00.000-07:00

It finally happened today; Apple conquered an old demon in a very visible manner:

It's with considerable excitement that I mark this milestone. I've always been an elitist, a fan of the superlative, one willing to pay a bit more and wait a bit longer for a better experience. My company's products have for a very long time (even through Apple's darkest years, 1994-1997) been based upon Apple computers. So I'm naturally happy to see Apple succeed.

But that's old news. The new battle has been Apple versus Google for a while now. And that struggle is dazzlingly complicated and nuanced and interesting to watch.

Today's Microsoft beat-down is more of a pleasant footnote to a previous era.

Give Him the Bird

2010-05-26T00:47:00.000-07:00

I arrived at the gym promptly after work the other day, in the middle of peak use time. I parked at the far end of the lot, and walked towards the entrance, only to be distracted by a raucous twittering from a shrubbery adjacent to the walkway.

Peering inside, I saw a disheveled baby bird, generously-sized and obviously hungry and impatient. It squawked at me fearlessly in hopes that I'd regurgitate. Instead, I peered closer, and reached for my iPhone to take a picture.

Wham! An angry chirping ball of feathers, claws, and beak slammed into the back of my head, bounced off, and darted back to altitude. I turned in surprise, just in time to witness the start of a new bombing run by the black-feathered, yellow-eyed terror. Apparently a parent had returned home, and didn't take kindly to my predatory mien.

I ducked, protected my head with my gym bag, and beat a hasty retreat while chuckling to myself. Later, when I left, I gave the shrub a wide berth, while keeping a skyward eye. I was not further molested.

That was one courageous bird. A (what, 50 or 100 gram?) bird attacking me is like me attacking, oh, say, a blue whale.

Assuming, that is, that that particular blue whale goes to the gym, and assuming that blue whales in general have opposable thumbs and a predilection for killing things for no good reason.

NOTE: for extra credit (or perhaps a special "that's awful" award) in the annals of language-smithing, I just used "that" three times within the space of four words, in an otherwise normal sentence. W00t.

Handjob Bob and the Cart Lady

2010-05-10T17:17:00.000-07:00

Getting back into the gym after erratic attendance is a painful proposition, and more-so when you're no longer 25. Refractory periods are longer and more painful; it sucks. I've been struggling with this lately, trying to find something to motivate me, something to keep me focused, while I work towards the shape that I want to be.

Thursday, I was doing a round of weightlifting, hitting several different muscle groups since I was going to be away from the gym all weekend. Bench press, dumbell and hammer curls, tricep pushdowns, leg press, and calf raises. I gave up an afternoon motorcycle ride in perfect weather to do so, yet things were feeling pretty good, and I was having fun.

I was distracted by an unexpected sight.

The guy ahead of me on the bench press machine was graying, relatively slight, and very lean with a runner's build. He was bench pressing well more than his own body weight, a stack nearly as large as what I was pushing. Unlike me, he was doing it easily.

Then he got up and moved to the free weights area, where he grabbed the heaviest medicine ball and proceeded to bang out a seemingly endless set of sit-ups on an incline bench.

I was non-plussed. I stole a few envious glances at him as I completed my bench press sets. He continued with the sit-ups, passing oh, maybe 200 reps in his (still) first set.

I noticed that he had no hands. Or rather, no fingers.

On the side of the medicine ball nearest me, he gripped it with what looked like the remainder of a palm of a hand, with no fingers or thumb. Just a little bony flappy thing at the end of his forearm.

Trying not to be too gawkish, I moved around to his other side, and checked out his other hand. Same thing: no fingers or thumb. Just a pinkish paddle-thing. I idly wondered whether he'd lost a protracted fight with a farm machine, or been frostbitten climbing Everest, or simply been born that way.

He didn't seem to notice the lack of digits as he approached ludicrous reps in his sit-up routine. Somehow he'd managed to bench press a small house without using any fingers, too. I moved off wide-eyed to do some leg presses.

Afterwards, I went to Freddies for supplies. For all I know, Handjob Bob was still banging out sit-ups like a machine when I left.

Striding in the Fred Meyer entryway where they keep the carts, I surprised a staggering beast settling herself painfully onto the too-small seat of one of the petite powered carts. It creaked in protest as her mighty dew-flaps engulfed the seat.

The weather was warm, and her pendulous back boobs jiggled suggestively at me as she stopped to catch her breath.

She ponderously lifted one huge, doughy, varicosed leg onto the running board of the cart, and I fled in horror. The whirr of the Cart Lady's unfortunate electric steed faded behind me as I sought refuge amidst the fresh vegetables.

So, there you have it: two vignettes with a single lesson. A positive role model, helping me to appreciate how little room for complaint I have, and a negative role model, reminding me why it's better to walk than ride.

Smarmy Wanker

2010-03-14T14:14:00.000-07:00

Today I was helping my mother with some documents, converting hard copies into PDFs using our scanner. A scanner is one of those peripherals that one needs maybe once a year, but which is incredibly handy to own on those rare occasions when it is needed. So, for us, that means that it's hidden in a closet, and trotted out upon demand.

I took the opportunity to scan a document that I've been meaning to get to for a bit more than a month, now. It's a receipt from Safeway, shown here. Click to zoom, if you're so predisposed, but it's just a receipt.

You can learn a lot about a person by perusing their music and bookshelves. The same is true for a grocery receipt: it says a bunch about the buyer.

So, lessee, what do we have here.

Haribo candy. And, two different types, at that. Considering that Haribo is the world's largest producer of gummi candy, it's a good bet that at least one of those candy types is gummi bears. Buying five bags at a time equals a serious addiction, though.

Best Foods? Three guesses what that is, and the first two don't count.

Cholula hot sauce. Well, no surprise there. My fascination with hot sauces is well known. Cholula is pretty boring and ubiquitous, though, so it's an interesting question what's going on here. Restocking a staple, maybe?

Kraft Singles. What? That's disgusting. And a bit surprising, coming from someone who appreciates premium foods and good cooking, and who was raised on proper cheddar. Perhaps it's the wife's fault.

Cottage cheese and yogurt. Fine, fine. Fruit and veggies, good. But wait, what was that hiding at the bottom of the REFRIG/FROZEN section? Ah, Tillamook ice cream. Local, upscale, but not quite as dense as Ben and Jerry's. That's gotta be the half-gallon size, for that price. Something to be shared with friends, one hopes.

Hot dog buns, Stacy's pita chips, and three different types of bottled beverages. Hmmm. The Stone IPA is probably mine, given the previously-asserted beer snobbery. The other booze seems kinda, well, girly. We've probably got a weekend party with friends in progress....

Looks like one of them has a weak stomach, though, judging by the acid reducer up there towards the top. Which, we might note, is a generic. That's gotta be the pharmacist wife's influence, for sure.

And now we come to the summary.

32 items, for a total of 88 dollars and 88 cents. Cool. That can't happen but maybe one time in a thousand. Paid by credit card, checking out at 6:12 pm on a Friday. Looks like a stop by the store after work, on a Friday.

So that weekend party with friends is confirmed as a likely scenario.

Safeway Club award, a savings of about ten percent, to...uh...wait, what? Member number 7162, also known as Smarmy Wanker?

That's...unexpected.

Here's the thing. Safeway used to offer sales and discounts as a matter of routine, without any special conditions or weirdness. Then, they implemented the Safeway Club, and Club Card, and started refusing discounts to anyone who didn't have a Safeway Club membership. To get their "real" prices, I had to fill out an application with my name, address, city, state, zip, birth date, email address, and home phone number, being careful to check the "opt out" box to prevent a deluge of "personally tailored coupons or offers from Safeway".

Personally tailored. Think about that. The Safeway Club account is being used to track everything that I buy, and when, so that they can maintain a profile of my spending habits, and use it to try to sell me things that I wouldn't normally buy.

As an added bonus, Safeway checkers were and are instructed to address you by Safeway Club surname, and thank you, as they hand you the receipt.

This sort of ass-hattery deeply annoys me. I don't want my purchases to be profiled, and I certainly don't want to receive coupons in the mail for branded (or generic, for that matter) miconazole, after making a bunch of unusually frequent bulk purchases of Trojans. I don't want a stranger pretending that they know my name, and addressing me with feigned intimacy. And I certainly don't want to have to carry yet another card in my wallet.

However, I indeed do want to pay real prices, not prices inflated by, oh, say 11% or more.

Enter Smarmy Wanker. He's been a friend of mine for several years now, and lets me use his Safeway Club Card whenever I want. Smarmy is of British descent, mainly, and so isn't necessarily recognized by poorly-educated checkers in American Safeways. Those checkers don't know the etymology of his first name, which they might be surprised to learn means "hypocritical, excessively or unpleasantly ingratiating, falsely earnest". Similarly for Smarmy's surname, which is also of British Commonwealth origin, and deeply familiar to nearly all of British, Canadian, Irish, and Australian descent. It's an unfortunate name, being both pejorative and self-masturbatory.

This veiled commentary on the despicable attributes of the Safeway Club and the checkout process, and the associated joke at the checker's expense, is nearly always lost on the Safeway employee. Most (as indeed Dominique did this time) simply grab the receipt, glance at the name, and without a hint of embarrassment or humor or understanding, loudly say to me, "Thank you Mister Wanker. You saved $11 today."

This makes my day, as you might imagine. Mrs. Wanker, not so much.

Only once, ever, has a checker done otherwise. The checker in question looked at the receipt, looked at me, narrowed her eyes, and declared, "This isn't your real name, is it." Delighted to have found a vaguely human human, I grinned, and said, "Nope!" She laughed, I laughed, and away I went.

ShadyURL

2010-02-19T16:38:00.000-08:00

Thanks to CNET, I've just discovered a particularly entertaining URL-shortener.

A URL-shortener takes a very long web address, for example:

http://www.aerostich.com/aerostich-expedition-pocket-plugger-tubeless-tire-repair-kit.html

and turns it into a short, easier-to-type-or-say equivalent URL, for example in this case:

http://tinyurl.com/ycngcg5

Some shortening services, like TinyURL, let you specify your own identifier, for example "aero-kit", and get the following (very easy to remember and communicate) URL:

http://tinyurl.com/aero-kit

That self-specifying only works, of course, if no one else has previously used that identifier. So all of the really fun shorteners, like "buttmonkey", have of course already been allocated:

http://tinyurl.com/buttmonkey

The braver souls can immediately see a sort of roulette involving TinyURL, namely picking the identifier at random, and seeing whether and where it goes. Ferinstance, oh, I dunno, "dogsex".

http://tinyurl.com/dogsex

But that's not what I came here to talk about. I found a new shortener service, shadyURL, that intentionally makes its shortened address seem like a dangerous, dodgy, sketchy destination. So, one can enter the URL of this article:

http://trenner.blogspot.com/2010/02/shadyurl.html

and get back this:

http://5z8.info/rickroll_eor

...which, despite seeming like another opportunity to get "Rickrolled", actually points to this page.

Or get back this (not shortened, just "ShadyURLed"):

http://5z8.info/myspace-of-sex_n8n3o_horse-slaughter

...which...well...I'm not sure what it sounds like, except that I'm pretty sure that I don't want to see, hear, or buy whatever they're selling.

Sweet. Can't wait to use this at work.

"Hey, can you send me that FDA link about software validation after a change, in the FDA General Principles of Software Validation?"

"Sure, boss. It's http://5z8.info/freeporn_pwy."

And...Chelada! Wait, WTF?

2010-02-11T17:05:00.000-08:00

I was at Freddies yesterday grabbing some essential groceries. Story!

At one end of the beer and chips aisle is the premium large-bottle and microbrew beer (like Stone Brewery's several delicious offerings). Then a bit further along is the mid-grade stuff (like Moose Drool, and Henry Weinhard's). Then, at the far end, nearest the dairy case, is the cheap stuff (Budweiser and Coors Light), which, like dairy, probably issues forth from cows or perhaps yaks.

I tend to frequent only the proper end of said aisle, but I needed some milk, and so I walked past the can section with my nose in the air. I was forced to stop by some force majeure, which caused me to look left, and see this single huge can staring at me from eye height:

I struggled to comprehend what I was seeing. My brain's language center was refusing to talk to the visual center, or perhaps was speaking Esperanto with a heavy Greek accent, through a shabby transcontinental phone link.

I peered closer, jerked my head back once in surprise, then went in again for a closer look. I looked at the shelf label. Then at the monstrous can. Then again at the shelf label. I rotated the can, to see if there was anything on the sides to help explain what I was seeing. I looked behind myself, for hidden cameras or laughing stockboys.

Eventually, I had to admit to myself that it wasn't a joke, and that a team of overpaid (perhaps severely overpaid) marketing executives had decided that the ideal combination to titillate the sophisticated American palate was the D+ yak piss that is Budweiser, mixed with (1) tomato juice and (2) clam juice. Clam juice. You know, shellfish ichor.

The Christian god is a jealous, angry, and vengeful god, as a foray into the Old Testament will tell you. But not even He could have conceived of such an Unholy Trinity. And not even Beelzebub himself would have had the foresight to put it in gigantic 1.5 pint cans.

BeerAdvocate reviews it as being two points worse than plain Budweiser, which is hard to imagine.

Yet...I must admit a certain sick fascination with the idea, and an urge to go buy one and try it, just to say that I did. Perhaps it's the small print: "with salt and lime" and "the perfect combination" are so ridiculously cheery and wrong in this context that they make me likely to spray a mouthful of beverage out my nose every time I read them.

UPDATE 1: That can is a nightmare of font abuse, isn't it?

UPDATE 2: I brought one home and tried it. It'd be nice to say "that's the worst thing that I've ever tasted", but it's not. In fact, I drank about half of it, puzzling. I did not vomit.

It's not thick. I'd somehow been expecting an assertive mix of Budweiser, clam, and V8, with a horrifying slurry mouth texture. But this is thin, a bit watery, reddish-translucent, and flat.

It doesn't noticeably taste of clams. Thank god.

In fact, the drink's clam and tomato components are, like Budweiser's so-called "beer", lifeless and disappointing.

This Isn't Hitler's iPad

2010-01-28T12:13:00.000-08:00

The video below is making the rounds at work today, in response to Apple's event yesterday:

That's dang funny!

And thought-provoking, too.

It's really interesting to see how many people online are up in arms because the iPad isn't a Mac OS X computer in tablet form, fully featured, for $499 (or $999, for that matter). Same with the litany of "I can't believe that they left out feature x" (camera, multitasking, support for Adobe Flash, ability to make phone calls, mouse support, HDMI out, RAM or hard drive upgrades, a stylus). Same with the oft-repeated complaint, "it can't even do what all other netbooks can".

They're missing the point.

There's a paradigm shift going on, in what mass computing devices are. That move towards ubiquitous and easy-to-use computing, simple enough for grandma or a two year old, is annoying the power users who are accustomed to having full access to the complex underbelly of their do-anything machine.

But it's delighting the mainstream, as we've seen with the iPhone and iPod touch.

Put another way, the iPad isn't meant to be a computer that can do everything. It's not a "tablet PC". It's not a laptop. It's not a phone. It's not a netbook. It's not a desktop replacement. And that's all completely intentional.

The fact that it lacks windows, folders, a mouse pointer, and a desktop is also completely intentional.

Rather, it's meant to be (and indeed seems to be, from the reports) a device that does certain things very well, that magically morphs its user interface to match your current task, and that merely happens to have a computer chip running a variant of OS X under the hood. The less people understand this, the more frustrated they seem to be.

Poor Hitler. He just doesn't get it.

POSTSCRIPT: Yes, I do appreciate the delicious irony that the YouTube video, above, being Flash-based, probably would not play embedded on the iPad, and would only work by being handed off to the dedicated YouTube app that Apple provides. But Flash is evil, and it needs to die. Even YouTube (a division of Google) agrees, and is working to make that happen.

Crazy-Good Fish Tacos

2010-01-19T17:35:00.000-08:00

It was at Mickey Finn's Brew Pub, my first time. My wife and I were visiting my brother at Reed College, and he took us up the street for some pub grub.

I was perusing the menu, trying to decide upon a burger (I usually am a sucker for the bleu cheese, or bacon, or bacon and bleu cheese). My brother said, "You should try the fish tacos".

"Fish, tacos? Ugh, that sounds terrible," I wittily replied.

He explained that they were actually lots better than they sounded, and that he'd had some great fish tacos in Baja at roadside stands.

Side Note 1: I still have the pistol-grip shotgun that my brother bought for that Baja trip. It's lost some bluing from rattling around in the tiny closet of mom's VW bus along dusty Baja roads, but it's still in good working order. It takes 3-inch 12-gauge shells, which are not at all fun to shoot with a pistol grip. Ow.

Side Note 2: I cannot say the word "Baja" without channeling Keanu Reeves from Point Break.

Anyhow, I had the fish tacos, that day at Mickey Finn's. They were a revelation, and the start of many years of making them myself.

The classic fish taco is fried cod, wrapped in a double corn tortilla, with shredded cabbage, water-thinned mayonnaise, lime, and salsa. And a beer. Simplicity itself.

In the years that I've been making them, I've wandered significantly from that simple base. I've dabbled in flour tortillas, cilantro, green onion, refried beans, whole black beans, lettuce, tomato, hot sauces, catsup (in one of my sluttier moments), and all manner of shredded cheeses. I've tried different seafood types (shark, cod, snapper, catfish, tuna, salmon, even scallops), and different cooking methods both bare and breaded (with flour, or corn meal, either simply dredged, or dipped in a real batter). I've tried pre-heating the tortillas, and trading beer for tequila.

Never has the result been anything less than satisfactory, except perhaps for the salmon, which is just too heavy-handed for a taco.

But my hands-down favorite was only recently attained. It turns out that, nutrition be damned, battered and deep-fried fish really is the key to awesomeness. This isn't an end-point, mind you, but it is my "best to date". Here it is:

2 c all-purpose flour
1 T baking powder
1 t salt
1 t chipotle chili powder

chilled Deschutes Bachelor ESB beers (Corona would probably technically work, and arguably be authentic to boot, too, but I'm a beer, well, elitist)

a couple pounds of boneless cod fillets (thawed previously frozen is fine)

corn starch

cheddar cheese (I like Tillamook Sharp)
shredded cabbage (I buy the pre-made coleslaw bags)
cilantro
green onions
mayonnaise
lime juice

flour tortillas (I like the burrito size; why fuck around?)

Hot Bitch at the Beach
Brother Bru-Bru's

vegetable oil for frying
dutch oven
fry thermometer
tongs
cooling rack
paper towels

Drink all of one of the beers.

Mix the flour, baking powder, salt, chili powder, and 1 bottle of beer with a whisk until smooth. Set aside in the refrigerator.

Shred the cheddar cheese (or, as I tend to do, cut into tiny shred-size dices because that's faster than washing a cheese grater). Chop the cilantro and green onion. Mix enough lime juice into the mayo to make it pourable but not too drippy (think ranch dressing, or perhaps a bit thinner). Place the cheese, cabbage, cilantro, green onion, and mayo sauce into individual bowls for garnishment. Put them with the hot sauces on the serving counter.

If for some reason you've recently slammed a bottle of beer on an empty stomach, you should be feeling it by now. Perform all the remaining steps with exaggerated care, to prevent amputation and burns.

Put 2-3 inches of oil into the dutch oven, and heat to 375 F. Meanwhile, make sure that the cod is trimmed of any gnarly bits and is truly bone free, then cut it into strips the diameter of your thumb and as long as the fillets permit (or the size of the dutch oven, whichever is less).

Press the cod strips with paper towels to remove excess moisture.

Once the oil is heated, turn the heat down to maintain 375 F.

Working a few strips at a time, dredge the cod in corn starch thoroughly, shake off the excess, then dip into the beer batter. Place the battered fish gently into the hot oil, being careful not to splash any oil in your eyes or on your crotch. Don't overcrowd the fish.

Once the fish is brown on one side, flip it over gently using tongs. Brown both sides, and then remove the fish to the cooling rack to drip dry. Don't put the fish on a paper towel! Let it drain on a metal rack, or it'll get soggy.

Check the oil temperature between batches.

Fry as much fish as you and your guests like, then turn the oil off and move it back from the edge of the stove. Remember the crotch and the eyes.

Heat the flour tortillas one at a time in a non-stick pan, until they become pliable but aren't yet crispy.

Encourage your guests to roll pieces of fish and condiments into the tortillas just as they come off the heat. The hotter the fish and the tortillas, the better.

Don't forget the hot sauces and beers.

Tyre Down and Stinger

2010-01-17T12:55:00.000-08:00

It's a great thing to find a mechanic service that you trust, and I'm blessed with a local garage (Sandpiper Import Services) which is family-run, conscientious, and detail-oriented, not to mention within easy walking distance of home. They get our Subaru and Honda service without question.

For motorcycles, the situation is less convenient, though the mechanics are equally treasured. I've found great mechanics for Ducati (Cheshire Motorsports) and Kawasaki (Cycletune). But they're both located in Portland, about 90 minutes away by bike (or two hours by car).

They're worth the trip, but of course the pick up or drop off of a motorcycle requires a second (chase) vehicle, plus driving the bike itself one direction. This is a pain in the ass for the chase car driver, and not much fun for the bike rider during bad weather, either. Plus, if we ever end up with a bike that won't run, there's a real question as to how the heck we'd deliver it for service.

Clearly, a bike trailer solves these problems. We've made about 10 bike service visits to Portland so far, meaning 20 round trips counting drop off and subsequent pick up. Considering the 4 hours of driver commitment per trip, that's about 80 hours of avoidable chase car time, so far. One can see how a trailer will pay for itself really quickly in additional weekend free time.

Now, I like to wait until I've found the best of a product category, and buy that superlative product, in the belief that quality pays for itself in total cost of ownership and in personal satisfaction. So a search for "the best trailer" was in order.

It turns out that there are tons of bike trailer options, ranging from $200 Harbor Freight generic utility trailers that require the creation of your own plywood floorboards and tie down eyelets, to $2400 chrome Kendon dedicated multi-bike haulers.

I was digging the Kendons. I especially liked the capability of standing on end for storage, since I have only a single-car garage, and it's already pretty full of bikes.

But then I saw the Stinger. Cool. The reviews that I could find online (Thunder Press, American Rider, motorcycle.com) spoke highly of it. And a reader comment at the bottom of a webBikeWorld review of another folding trailer was positive about the Stinger, too.

I sat on the thought for a while, and didn't buy any trailer. We kept doing two-person trips to Portland, while the weather got nastier.

Christmas arrived, and my smallest physical package under the tree contained...a coupon for a Stinger trailer, from my wife! Yeah, she's a keeper.

The trailer arrived from A1A Motorcycles in Florida (they were actually cheaper than the California manufacturer by a couple hundred bucks) a couple weeks ago, via cargo truck and lift gate. It was strapped to a pallet, which I slipped into the garage while I had a trailer hitch installed on the Subaru by...you guessed it, Sandpiper.

This weekend, I finally got a chance to unwrap that Christmas present, hook it up, and give it a try.

Because of the webBikeWorld article, I'd tracked down and ordered a unique bit of Aussie cleverness, the "Tyre Down" (heh!), meant for securely fastening motorcycles for transport. It arrived just in time for this weekend. I'd also bought a couple of soft hooks and some un-extraordinary ratchet tie downs at Fred Meyer.

The trailer was built like a tank, with great attention to detail throughout. In a quick survey, I noted that it was not only securely attached to the palette with plenty of metal strapping, but that the end of the wiring harness was zip-tied to a retaining pin just to keep it from flopping around during shipment. Other over-the-top touches included fender mounts of 1/4" steel suitable for standing on, with anti-skid pads chamfered at the corners to prevent peel-up, a plastic skid plate on the loading gate, and a rectangular support for loading, to prevent any pressure being put on the trailer hitch. Fasteners were all of great quality, with secure retaining pins.

First I had to remove the trailer from the pallet. This proved to be harder than it looked, since the metal strapping was, well, metal. I grabbed a pair of wire snips. No chance in hell. Wire cutters? Negative. Bypass pruning shears? Maybe, but it'd surely kill the shears. Dremel tool? It'd take forever. Pliers? No way. The crimp resisted my best efforts.

Finally, I turned to a hacksaw. This turned out to be the perfect tool, and I was able to cut through all the wire strapping in just a few seconds. The trailer and spare tire separated from the cart!

I pulled loose the three retaining pins, and unfolded the trailer. It attached easily to the trailer hitch tongue, using nothing but my fingers. The electrical lead plugged in to the Subaru hitch pigtail, and all the lights worked.

The trailer mount was definitely a non-standard design, consisting of a captive swiveling pin that mounted directly to the trailer hitch tongue. No trailer ball is used. This is a conscious choice of the designer, to improve stability.

I replaced the two main pins, reserving the third for closing the loading gate.

I adjusted the neato front tire capture thing (the "Condor Chock", a patented device that's evidently been OEM sourced and included with every Stinger trailer) to the middle position, and with a small prayer to the gods of verticality, wheeled my bike up onto the rail while walking beside it.

This was surprisingly easy, until I got to the chock. To get the tire up into the chock, a bit of momentum and oomph was required. Still, it was straight-forward and very controllable. The chock grabbed the front tire, and the weight of the bike held it in place. Surprisingly, I was able to (gingerly) release the bike, and have it remain upright purely because of the capture device. This allowed me to go get the Tyre Down.

The instructions for the Tyre Down said that the hook points should ideally be about 5 cm ahead of the axle, so that the Tyre Down pulled slightly forward as well as down. To my delight (and using a tape measure because I'm like that) I discovered that the Ducati axle was almost exactly in the right place. I slipped the Tyre Down over the wheel, and tightened its two ratchets. In doing so, I noticed that the Tyre Down plates were very close to the swing-arm of the bike. I imagined that they'd rub into the swing-arm during transport, creating a Grotty Spot™. I released the ratchets and slightly repositioned the Tyre Down, then retightened it. Perfect.

The bike was already very stable, but I wasn't going anywhere without the front end tied down. I looped the soft hooks around the forks, and tightened the ratchets enough to compress the front suspension about 2 inches.

After checking all the ratchets for tightness, I shook the bike from side to side. It felt like it was glued to the trailer.

The Ducati rear tire (a 180) just fit the rails. A larger tire might not, but 180 is plenty for me.

I raised the loading gate, inserted the final pin, and removed that rectangular loading support thingy.

After procuring a chase car with wife, I took the whole assembly for a spin. After about a mile of city streets, I pulled over and checked the tie downs. No problems. A couple more miles, and then an onramp and some freeway speeds. Not a single problem. Other than the rearview mirror view, I could barely tell that the trailer was attached to the Subaru (which is not known for its pulling capacity).

We looped back to the house, and I backed the trailer into our carport with only a couple attempts. Trailer backing is an art, and (though I know the tricks conceptually) I need some practice.

In a few minutes, I'd removed the tie downs, unloaded the bike, folded the trailer, and slid both into the garage. Sweet. It's a wonderful thing to discover new, superlative products, and I'm pleased to say that the Stinger and the Tyre Down both...are!

Complaints: Only one so far. The Stinger tail light wiring is exposed to weather, when the gate is up in the travel mode. Sure, those crimps look fine, but a little bit of extra covering metal would have been another nice touch, in a product with lots of nice touches.

Powertwit

2010-01-12T17:02:00.000-08:00

I just checked what my Twitter account is worth, and got this:

$0

Created by WhatsMyTwitterAccountWorth.com

Excellent. That's exactly what I guessed, after considering that negative values aren't allowed.

Sadly there's no obvious equivalent self-masturbatory account evaluator for Facebook, but I'd expect that I'm a similarly valuable Facer.

Salt Cay Vignettes (Part 5) - World Class Diving

2009-12-26T19:33:00.001-08:00

EXT. SALT CAY - DIVE BOAT - MORNING

Tom, Heidi, their Male Friend, and ANOTHER COUPLE are aboard the flat-bottom dive CAROLINA SKIFF, along with RICHARD, the dive master. SCUBA TANKS and ATTACHED GEAR line the racks in the center of the boat. FINS are piled near the bow.

The passengers are distributed along either side on BENCHES, variously fiddling with GEAR, applying SUNSCREEN, or simply looking about. Under the control of Richard, the skiff backs out of the mooring, pirouettes, and powers out of the harbor. The seas are calm and supernaturally blue-green.

EXT. SALT CAY - DIVE BOAT - LATER

The boat slows as it approaches a PERMANENT MOORING. The Male Friend moves to the bow, fishes out the slightly slimy ROPE, and attaches it to the BOW CLEAT.

RICHARD
Okay, this dive site is Kelly's Folly. The mooring is at about 40 feet, with a sandy bottom and various coral heads from 30 to 50 feet. Watch for garden eels, turtles, and sting rays. We'll go against the current along the wall, which starts at about 50 feet. There are lots of nice gorgonians and sponges along the wall, and watch for lion fish. At 1500 psi, give me this signal (he makes a "timeout" T with his hands), and we'll turn around. Maximum dive time is one hour, but dive within your computer limits. Remember that the nearest deco chamber is several hours away, so we'll dive no-deco dives only.

The divers don their gear. Tom is wearing SWIM TRUNKS, the BUOYANCY COMPENSATOR/TANK/REGULATOR combo, a WEIGHT BELT, and MASK and FINS. No exposure suit.

MALE DIVER
Aren't you cold? No wet suit?

TOM
Nah. The water is 80 degrees, and beside I've got some insulation.
(he pats his stomach)

Tom backrolls into the water.

EXT. SALT CAY - UNDERWATER - LATER

Tom kicks languidly along, watching the aquarium-like scenes. Periodically he inverts himself, hovering completely upside down near a CORAL HEAD to peer into a crevice in search of critters.

EXT. SALT CAY - DIVE BOAT - LATER

The boat is again moored at a dive site.

RICHARD
Okay, this dive site is Turtle Garden. The mooring is at about 40 feet, with a sandy bottom and various coral heads from 30 to 50 feet. Watch for garden eels, turtles, and sting rays. We'll go against the current along the wall, which starts at about 50 feet. There are lots of nice gorgonians and sponges along the wall, and watch for lion fish. At 1500 psi, give me this signal (he makes a "timeout" T with his hands), and we'll turn around. Maximum dive time is one hour, but dive within your computer limits. Remember that the nearest deco chamber is several hours away, so we'll dive no-deco dives only.

EXT. SALT CAY - UNDERWATER - LATER

Searching a coral head, Tom spots a rare JUVENILE SPOTTED DRUM fish. He spins about excitedly and makes an epileptic drummer signal to Richard, who comes over and inspects the find. Divers congregate on the coral head, then drift off in search of other exotics.

EXT. SALT CAY - UNDERWATER - LATER

Cruising along the wall, Tom spots a massive GREAT HAMMERHEAD SHARK out in the blue water. He signals "shark" to the rest of the group as it passes the group and disappears into the blue.

EXT. SALT CAY - UNDERWATER - LATER

Tom warily faces a school of silvery, snaggle-toothed BARRACUDA while hovering at 15 feet for his safety stop.

INT. SALT CAY - CAPTAIN MORGAN'S COTTAGE - LATER

Tom and Heidi and the Male Friend wolf down a LUNCH of rice, chicken, cheese, chips, catsup, juice, water, imitation Red Bull, chocolates, and cheese poofs. The Kid and the Female Friend eat more sedately, and steal bemused glances at the ravenous divers.

EXT. SALT CAY - DIVE BOAT - AFTERNOON

The boat is moored.

RICHARD
Okay, this dive site is Powerhouse. The mooring is at about 40 feet, with a sandy bottom and various coral heads from 30 to 50 feet. Watch for garden eels, turtles, and sting rays. We'll go against the current along the wall, which...

TOM
Yeah, yeah...

RICHARD
...starts at about 50 feet. There are lots of nice gorgonians and sponges along the wall, and watch for...

TOM, HEIDI, and MALE FRIEND
Lion fish!

RICHARD
...lion fish. At 1500 psi, give me this signal (he makes a "timeout" T with his hands), and...

FADE TO:

EXT. SALT CAY - UNDERWATER - LATER

Responding to a "shark" sign from the dive master, Tom comes over to discover an 8 or 10 foot long NURSE SHARK wedged under a CORAL LEDGE, resting on the sandy bottom. He gets good and close to check it out. The shark ignores him.

EXT. SALT CAY - UNDERWATER - LATER

Tom eyes a pair of LION FISH fanning their spectacular fins on the top of a coral head at about 80 feet.

INT. SALT CAY - CAPTAIN MORGAN'S COTTAGE - LATER

The adults drink TASTY BEVERAGES, while the Kid plays with PLAY-DOH. The Female Friend has a PADI OPEN WATER DIVER MANUAL open on the COFFEE TABLE in the center of the room, and is perusing it with PEN and PAPER handy.

MALE FRIEND
...they're pretty much useless. I never wear one, unless I'm at a pool session, or helping out with students. Then I have to.

TOM
I hate 'em. They just get in the way and tangle the mask strap. And besides, with this kind of diving, they really are useless. Besides, they impair my whole minimalist gear vibe.

FEMALE FRIEND
I do like not having many hoses. I might need a wrist computer.

TOM
An air-integrated computer? Yeah, they rock.
(he looks smug)

MALE FRIEND
If they work.

TOM
(defensively)
Well, I've never had problems with mine, except that weird battery issue on the first dive. A reset fixed that, and it's been working perfectly since. Not even a hint of signal problems.

TOM
Anyhow, back to the original statement. Snorkels suck, amirite?

MALE FRIEND
Yeah.

EXT. SALT CAY - DIVE BOAT - MORNING

Tom, the Male Friend, the Female Friend, and ANOTHER COUPLE are aboard the flat-bottom dive Carolina Skiff, along with RICHARD, the dive master. SCUBA TANKS and ATTACHED GEAR line the racks in the center of the boat. FINS are piled near the bow.

The passengers are preparing as usual.

EXT. SALT CAY - DIVE BOAT - LATER

The boat slows as it approaches a permanent mooring. Tom moves to the bow, fishes out the slightly slimy rope, and attaches it to the bow cleat.

RICHARD
Okay, this dive site is Kelly's Annex.
(fading into the background)
The mooring is at about 40 feet, with a sandy bottom and various coral heads from 30 to 50 feet...

Tom efficiently dons his minimalist dive gear. No snorkel.

RICHARD
(background)
Watch for garden eels, turtles, and sting rays. We'll go against the current along the wall, which starts at about 50 feet.

The Male Friend and Female Friend don their gear. SNORKELS for both. The snorkels tend to tangle in the mask straps, and they're a hassle to apply.

RICHARD
(background)
There are lots of nice gorgonians and sponges along the wall, and watch for lion fish.
(voice louder, switching to foreground)
Our maximum depth for this dive is 60 feet, because of our apprentice diver.

Tom looks up and nods.

RICHARD
(fading into background)
At 1500 psi, give me this signal and we'll turn around. Maximum dive time is one hour, but dive within your computer limits. Remember that the nearest deco chamber is several hours away, so we'll dive no-deco dives only.

Richard dons his gear, including SNORKEL.

Tom notices and laughs to himself.

EXT. SALT CAY - UNDERWATER - LATER

The Male and Female Friend rest on the sandy bottom with Richard, performing mask clearing and breathing skills. Tom searches along the bottom of coral formations nearby. He surprises a PEACOCK FLOUNDER, which skims off flashing blue circles across its back, and settles, nearly invisible, into the sand. Tom pursues it, flushing it into motion several more times before tiring of the sport.

EXT. SALT CAY - DIVE BOAT - LATER

All the divers are back aboard, and have removed their gear to the racks. Several are shivering. Tom appears immune.

RICHARD
I'd like to announce that we'll be returning to shore with one more diver than when we departed. Congratulations!
(he points at the Female Friend)

Cheers and clapping from all.

INT. SALT CAY - CAPTAIN MORGAN'S COTTAGE - LATER

Tom and the Female Friend and the Male Friend wolf down a LUNCH of rice, chicken, cheese, chips, catsup, juice, water, imitation Red Bull, chocolates, and cheese poofs. The Kid and Heidi eat more sedately, and steal bemused glances at the ravenous divers.

Salt Cay Vignettes (Part 4) - Sunset Drinks

2009-12-26T19:30:00.001-08:00

EXT. SALT CAY - CAPTAIN MORGAN'S COTTAGE - 30 MINUTES BEFORE SUNSET

The travelers exit the house in a rush, carrying CAMERAS, NALGENE BOTTLES, BACKPACKS, and the barefoot Kid. They all pile into the golf cart.

Tom, driving, plunges the key into the ignition, twists, it, flicks the gear lever to forward, and presses the gas pedal. An ANEMIC WHEEZE issues forth from the engine, and it does not start.

The two friends, in a practiced move, hop off the rear seat, and push the cart forward while Tom pumps the gas pedal. The engine catches, and they hop aboard, laughing, as the cart careens out of the property entrance onto the road. Bobbing and weaving to avoid potholes, they head towards the salinas.

EXT. SALT CAY - BEACH WALL NEAR THE NATURAL "SWIMMING POOL" - 10 MINUTES BEFORE SUNSET

Our travelers sit on the aging stone and mortar wall, feet dangling, facing the ocean. A ridiculously beautiful blazing orange sky stretches before them. No one else is visible in either direction, either on the beach or on the road behind them.

The four adults are passing back and forth two 32-OZ NALGENE DRINK BOTTLES filled with RUM PUNCH. The Kid is sipping a TETRABOX OF JUICE through a STRAW.

MALE FRIEND
How much rum did you put in this?

TOM
Not much.

MALE FRIEND
How much?

TOM
Just one...number.

MALE FRIEND
(examining the ounce markings on the side of the bottle)
What number?

TOM
Eight. Eight ounces.

MALE FRIEND
Yeah, right.

They resume drinking. In short order, the two friends have depleted their drink bottle by two-thirds. Tom and Heidi, conversely, have consumed barely a third of theirs. Sunset arrives and fades, and with it:

MALE FRIEND
(giggling)
How much did you put in here?

TOM
I already told you. Eight ounces of rum. Per bottle. That's a full cup, for those of you keeping score. And, oh, about 20 ounces of pineapple juice.

MALE FRIEND
(accusingly, with a slight slur of words)
I can't feel my legs.

Everyone else laughs.

TOM
That's normal.

MALE FRIEND
No it's not.

This causes a gale of laughter from everybody but him. He indignantly stands up, lurching, and heads away from the water, towards the golf cart. Everyone else follows.

MALE FRIEND
(to no one in particular, in a loud voice)
See, I'm used to drinking juice quickly. And this tastes like juice.

They pile into the golf cart, with two pushing, and it finally starts. They weave off towards the salinas in the dark, laughing. After a long moment, the headlights come on, causing even more laughter.

EXT. SALT CAY - CAPTAIN MORGAN'S COTTAGE - EVENING

Lights blaze from within the cottage. A cool breeze blows. A dizzying starscape stretches overhead. Our four adult travelers variously sip tea and more rum punch, and eat chocolates and cookies while chatting and looking at the stars from the comfort of the patio furniture. Shooting stars periodically zip overhead.

Salt Cay Vignettes (Part 3) - Reviving the Golf Cart

2009-12-26T19:28:00.000-08:00

EXT. SALT CAY - SALINAS - LATE AFTERNOON

It's a brief period of partial clouds, lessening the unrelenting heat. Tom, Heidi, and their Male Friend trek along the rocky and potholed road. Tom carries a red plastic GAS CAN containing about a gallon of year-old gasoline. His friend wears a BACKPACK full of tools, REFLECTIVE SUNGLASSES, and a BASEBALL CAP turned around backwards. He carries a NALGENE WATER BOTTLE on one hand, and a large SPRAY CAN OF WD-40 in the other. They're upbeat as they set out to retrieve the golf cart.

EXT. SALT CAY - SALINAS - LATER

Our intrepid trio have slowed a bit in their trek along the salinas. It's hot, and they're moving deliberately and slowly. A mangy-looking DONKEY eyes them wearily from near the road.

TOM
(with a start of dismay)
Ah, whoops! I forgot the EZ-GO instruction manuals. They're on my iPhone.

HEIDI
I'll go get it, and catch up with you.

MALE FRIEND
Are you sure?

HEIDI
Yep, keep going.

She turns around, and starts jogging back to the house. Tom and the Male Friend continue walking. After another minute:

TOM
Ah, I'm going to need the key, too. Crap.

They both turn around, and shout after the disappearing Heidi:

TOM
Heidi!

MALE FRIEND
Heidi!

Heidi doesn't hear, and is rapidly disappearing into the distance.

MALE FRIEND
I'll go get it. You keep going.

He turns around, and starts jogging back to the house. Tom continues walking.

EXT. SALT CAY - SALINAS - LATER

After a few minutes of trekking, Tom is fortunate enough to hitch a ride in a beat-up pick-up. He zips along the salinas, grinning.

EXT. SALT CAY - CAPTAIN MORGAN'S COTTAGE - LATER

After traveling nearly a mile in a few minutes, Tom arrives conveniently at Captain Morgan's Hideaway.

EXT. SALT CAY - CAPTAIN MORGAN'S HIDEAWAY (AKA TIM AND NANCY'S) - LATER

Using a CORDLESS DRILL, Tom "unlocks" the front door of the new and unfinished house by unscrewing a BOARD. This requires both PHILLIPS and SQUARE DRIVE BITS - this passes as high security on Salt Cay.

Just inside the door, Tom retrieves a BATTERY, then relocks the door by screwing the board back in place.

He pushes aside some wire fencing held in place with CONCRETE BLOCKS, and moves into the back yard.

To the left near the house is a large pile of SCRAP LUMBER, the remains of the first "Hideaway" after the hurricane. To the right is a locked 40-FOOT SHIPPING CONTAINER, beside which resides a weathered GOLF CART.

He looks critically at the rear seat of the golf cart, which is stained. He lifts it, and HUNDREDS OF BUGS scamper out from the ROTTING UNDERSIDE.

TOM
Ew!

He removes the entire rear seat, causing the wood underside to disintegrate. He separates it from the foam and cover, and flings the wood to the side.

Heidi and the Male Friend arrive.

TOM
That was quick.
(pleased with himself)
I got a ride.

MALE FRIEND
You suck.

Placing the gas, backpack, water, and WD-40 on the ground, the two remove the GOLF CART SEAT, to allow access to the dusty and rusty ENGINE.

TOM
Yow.

Tom reattaches the battery to the red and black wires using a RUSTY CRESCENT WRENCH, and being careful to not touch other metal nor bridge across the terminals.

From the backpack he produces a KEY, and turns on the golf cart ignition. Nothing. He presses the GAS PEDAL. Nothing. He tries the HEADLIGHTS. Nothing.

TOM
I think the battery's dead.

MALE FRIEND
Yep, looks that way.

TOM
Crap. Well, I've got a trickle charger back at the house.

MALE FRIEND
Try again tomorrow?

TOM
Yeah.

Tom disconnects the battery, being somewhat less careful to avoid shock.

HEIDI
Do you think that we can leave the gas here?

TOM
Yeah, ought to be fine. It's not exactly a high-traffic area.
(he laughs)

They pack up everything but the gas and the WD-40, which they leave on the floorboards of the golf cart. They reattach the seat, then pick up the battery and walk back towards the salinas.

EXT. SALT CAY - CAPTAIN MORGAN'S COTTAGE - LATER

Our three mechanics return via dilapidated pickup truck, having fortuitously hitched a ride mid-trek. They re-enter the cottage with the battery.

INT. SALT CAY - CAPTAIN MORGAN'S COTTAGE

The battery sits on the kitchen counter, attached via TRICKLE CHARGER to a wall outlet. The travelers are making DINNER and sipping TASTY BEVERAGES.

HEIDI
(pointing at the battery)
Does that have to be on the kitchen counter?

TOM
It's fine there. It's just sulphuric acid. Oughta be safe...unless it explodes.

HEIDI
Hmmpf.

EXT. SALT CAY - CAPTAIN MORGAN'S COTTAGE - MORNING

Our travelers depart the Cottage with the (charged) battery and dive gear, to undertake round two with the golf cart (Tom and Heidi and the Kid) and to go diving (the friends).

The truck drops Tom, Heidi, and the Kid at the driveway to the Hidaway. Tom grabs the battery, and they walk the short distance to the Hideaway. Tom pushes aside the wire fence, and enters the back yard, where he faces the golf cart.

TOM
(under his breath)
Okay, you bitch.

He removes the seat, and reattaches the battery. He inserts the key, turns it, and turns on the headlights. They glow brightly. He turns off the headlights, and examines the engine. He removes a pop-off PLASTIC COVER, exposing the STARTER SOLENOID. He looks at the WIRING, which all seems more-or-less okay, though a bit dusty.

He examines the fuse box, which only contains a single FUSE. He pops the fuse, and examines it. It's dead. He retrieves a similarly-colored fuse from the backpack, and inserts it.

He checks the FUEL TANK, which is low. Part of the CAP GASKET disintegrates when he unscrews the CAP. He shrugs, and removes the rest of the gasket.

TOM
"Optional", we'll call it.

He sniffs the gas can SPOUT, shakes it a bit, sniffs again, then pours all of the GAS from the can into the tank, filling it about half full. He replaces the cap.

After a minute, he replaces the (now-bottomless) seat cover and foam on the golf cart. All the bugs have long since departed.

Shifting attention back to the engine, he examines the GEAR LEVER, setting the yellow MODE DIAL on the inside to neutral.

He scratches his head, then shrugs. He switches the ignition to on, and presses the gas pedal. The starter whines, the engine turns over, and coughs. Tom releases the pedal in surprise.

TOM
Ha!

He presses the pedal again, more deliberately, and the engines roars to life. He holds the pedal down, and the engine happily chugs to itself.

TOM
(grinning)
Woot.

HEIDI
Hey!

He continues to hold the pedal for a minute or so, then releases it. The engine stops. He sets the mode dial to normal, and turns the gear lever to forward. He presses the gas pedal. Nothing. Presses it again. Nothing. He switches it back to the neutral mode, and presses the pedal. The engine roars to life.

TOM
Huh.

He returns to contemplating the engine.

TOM
(half to himself)
Well, I can get it to run in neutral, but not in gear. Not sure why yet.

He returns to contemplation, as they join him and stare at the engine.

Tom fiddles with the mode dial, eliciting a BACK-UP WARNING TONE. He switches it off.

As the kid starts to wander, Heidi pursues her. Tom continues to stare at the engine, head cocked to the side.

Tom switches the mode dial back to normal, and sets the gear lever to forward. He presses the pedal, and the cart unexpectedly lurches forward a bit before stalling.

TOM
Hey!
(after a second of thought)
Let's push it a bit forward. Maybe it's just seized.

They push the cart forward, and Tom simultaneously presses the gas pedal. The cart roars to life, and Tom hops onboard, goosing the pedal to keep it moving. Something in the engine SQUEALS horribly, like a fan belt slipping. He roars off, narrowly missing some cinderblocks and a fence post, and does a circle in the clearing outside the back yard, engine squealing and roaring. The Kid stares in wonderment.

KID
Where's Tom going?

TOM
(grinning, yelling)
Musta just been the fuse!

He pulls up, and they clamber aboard. With a squeal and a roar, they bounce off towards the dive shop.

Salt Cay Vignettes (Part 2) - Arriving at the Cottage

2009-12-22T19:41:00.000-08:00

EXT. SALT CAY - CAPTAIN MORGAN'S COTTAGE - NOON

The yard has recently been cleared of acacia bushes by two machete-weilding Haitians. Several HUGE PILES OF ACACIA mixed with scrap lumber dot the yard. The cottage itself is greatly weathered on the exterior, with peeling and faded paint, warped doors, rusty hardware, and amateurishly-mounted gutters.

Tom forces open the front door, which has been locked with a shiny new (and completely ineffective) padlock for which he lacks a key. Our travelers enter.

INT. SALT CAY - CAPTAIN MORGAN'S COTTAGE

The interior is in disarray, with furniture, linens, boxes, and tools strewn haphazardly about. Everything is covered with a patina of dead bugs and lizard droppings. Some amorphous piles are covered with BLUE U-HAUL SHIPPING BLANKETS.

The refrigerator hangs open, and is filthy inside. One of the bedrooms has been completely emptied of all contents, and shows evidence of a recent roof repair.

The travelers drop their bags in the empty bedroom, and survey the chaos.

TOM
(after flicking on the main breaker)
We've got power, at least.
(and after opening a gray case on a nearby table)
Hey, the cordless drill is still here!
(and after opening a sealed orange Pelican case next to the drill case)
Yay! We've got knives and batteries and speakers.

The travelers start removing drop cloths, piling them to one side, to reveal clothing, more boxes, cookware, and other household goods. They open doors and windows.

TOM
(grabbing a FLASHLIGHT)
I'm going to go see about the water.

EXT. SALT CAY - CAPTAIN MORGAN'S COTTAGE - NOON

Tom shines the flashlight down into the cistern through a hole in the corrugated cover. He sees several feet of cool, clear water.

Turning to the PUMP HOUSE, Tom notices that the wooden roof and front of the pump house are completely gone, stolen by the winds of the last hurricane. The pump, water heater, and pressurized water reservoir are all fully exposed to the elements, and are now completely covered in rust.

TOM
(muttering to himself)
That's not good.

Tom goes to flip on the WATER PUMP SWITCH, and discovers that it and the WATER HEATER SWITCH are both already on. He turns them off, and then cycles the pump switch several times. There's no sound from the pump.

TOM
(muttering to himself)
That's not good.

Tom disappears back into the cottage, returning with a rusty CLAW HAMMER. He cycles the pump switch again. Nothing. He gives the pump a couple sharp whacks with the hammer, and tries the switch again. Nothing.

TOM
Fuck.

Tom looks at the BYPASS VALVE above the pump. It's been left open, so that the pump interior has been open to the salt, wind, and rain. He peers down the bypass tube with the flashlight, absentmindedly opening and closing the valve.

TOM
(muttering to himself)
Huh. Wonder if it needs to be primed.

Tom disappears back into the cottage, returning with the last of the traveler's bottled water. He dumps the half liter of water into the open bypass valve, then cycles the pump switch again. Nothing. He gives the pump another whack with the hammer, and tries the switch again. The pump starts suddenly, and rusty water shoots up out of the bypass valve, splashing all over Tom.

TOM
Woot!

Tom closes the bypass valve, watches the GAUGE on the pressurized water reservoir for a moment, and then disappears into the cottage. TROPICAL MUSIC can be heard from within.

Tom returns with a BOTTLE OF PURE BLEACH, and pours half of it into the cistern, then adds another half cup for good measure. He returns to the cottage with the bleach bottle, and comes back again with a GARDEN HOSE. He routes the hose from the pump to the far end of the cistern, so that it recycles water to distribute the bleach throughout the cistern. He returns to the cottage.

EXT. SALT CAY - CAPTAIN MORGAN'S COTTAGE - LATER

Tom returns and turns off the hose at the pump. He re-enters the cottage.

EXT. SALT CAY - CAPTAIN MORGAN'S COTTAGE - LATER

Tom emerges and pokes at the pump, which is still running. He peers at the gauge on the pressurized water reservoir, which shows 40 PSI. He feels the pump, then sharply draws back his hand from the heat.

TOM
That's not good.

Tom turns off the pump at the switch, and returns to the cottage.

EXT. SALT CAY - CAPTAIN MORGAN'S COTTAGE - LATER

Tom emerges to turn on the pump at the switch, and returns to the cottage.

EXT. SALT CAY - CAPTAIN MORGAN'S COTTAGE - LATER

Tom emerges to turn off the pump at the switch, and returns to the cottage.

EXT. SALT CAY - CAPTAIN MORGAN'S COTTAGE - LATER

Tom emerges to turn on the pump at the switch, and returns to the cottage.

EXT. SALT CAY - CAPTAIN MORGAN'S COTTAGE - LATER

Tom emerges to turn off the pump at the switch, and returns to the cottage.

EXT. SALT CAY - CAPTAIN MORGAN'S COTTAGE - EARLY EVENING

Lights blaze from within the cottage. Tropical music can still be heard. Patio furniture has been placed on the cement patio at the front door. A cooling breeze blows, and a crazy spread of stars is beginning to show overhead.

The MALE FRIEND exits the cottage, and approaches the pump house. He turns on the pump at the switch, and then inspects the PRESSURE VALVE on the pump. He removes the PROTECTIVE COVER, give the rusty MECHANICAL DIAL a twist, and the pump stops. He replaces the cover and returns to the cottage.

EXT. SALT CAY - CAPTAIN MORGAN'S COTTAGE - LATER

Our tired travelers are arrayed on the patio, sipping fruity rum drinks. One enters the cottage. After a moment, a toilet flushes.

The pump automatically turns on, then correctly turns off after a brief period. The group cheers.

Salt Cay Vignettes (Part 1) - EUG to PLS

2009-12-22T18:03:00.000-08:00

INT. LIVING ROOM - EARLY MORNING

TOM sits on the floor in the center of the room in the midst of a pile of all-black DIVE LUGGAGE, DIVE EQUIPMENT, food, linens, gifts, clothing, and toiletries. HEIDI hovers nearby, looking flustered.

HEIDI
(pacing)
It's never going to fit.

TOM
(looking up from the floor, in a slightly congested voice)
Sure it will.

Tom begins to pack, starting with the dive equipment, wrapping FRAGILE ITEMS in the linens, and jamming clothing and food into the fin pockets of the dive luggage. Heidi joins in.

INT. LIVING ROOM - LATER

The checked and CARRY-ON LUGGAGE is packed to the limit, and neatly piled in the center of the now-bare floor.

HEIDI
Sweet.

TOM
Sweet.

INT. AIRPORT CHECK-IN COUNTER - EARLY EVENING

The airport is not particularly busy. LUGGAGE FOR FOUR ADULTS AND A CHILD is piled near the check-in counter. The agent is weighing luggage, and applying PLS DESTINATION TAGS.

Heidi, Tom, and their TWO FRIENDS stand nearby. They all look tired and stressed. The FRIEND'S THREE-YEAR-OLD CHILD scampers about the retractable belt barriers, and is periodically called back by her parents when she strays too far.

AGENT
(weighing a checked bag)
This one is overweight by 3 pounds.

TOM
Wait, isn't the limit 70 pounds?

MALE FRIEND
No, they changed it to 50 pounds.

AGENT
(weighing the next bag)
This one is overweight too. 5 pounds.

TOM
Oh...
(after pausing in thought)
Well, what's the damage?

AGENT
For international, it's going to be a lot. You'd be better off buying another carry-on, and putting the extra in it.

TOM
How much is a lot?

AGENT
(after consulting his terminal)
51 to 70 pounds is 150 dollars.

TOM
(shocked)
What!?

AGENT
Each.

TOM
Holy crap.

AGENT
There's a place around the corner that sells carry-ons. Not Brookstone, though, go past it to Hudson News.

Tom heads off to buy a carry-on while everyone else waits.

INT. AIRPLANE - SOMEWHERE BETWEEN PORTLAND AND ATLANTA - NIGHT

Our five travelers occupy a row of the completely full MD-90 aircraft. Cabin lights are dimmed, and most passengers doze fitfully in their uncomfortable seats.

The Kid sleeps soundly, stretched out fully between her parents. Tom glares at her jealously.

Tom tries to sleep by resting his head in his hands, elbows braced upon the fold-up table. His attempts are repeatedly thwarted by movements of the man in the seat in front of him, which cause the hard plastic seat-back to smack him in the forehead.

The dry air wreaks havoc with respiratory systems, and aggravates Tom's pre-existing cold. He gulps water when it's offered, but that offers scant relief. He clears his throat uncomfortably.

INT. AIRPLANE - LAVATORY

Tom braces himself on the sink, and alternates between coughs and clearing of his sinuses. He spits GREENISH PHLEGM into the sink repeatedly. He blows his nose, and disposes of the BLOODY TISSUE in the toilet.

INT. AIRPLANE - FLIGHT ATTENDANT STAGING AREA - NIGHT

Tom pokes his head past the CURTAIN, and speaks to the two lounging attendants:

TOM
Can I trouble you for some water?

They pour him a large CUP OF WATER.

TOM
Thanks. The dry air is murder.

Tom gulps half of the water, and carries the remainder back to his seat. After regaining his seat, he coughs dryly, then looks sideways at Heidi who is engrossed in the IN-FLIGHT ENTERTAINMENT SYSTEM, which indicates that it's -68F outside, at 37,000 feet.

TOM
(muttering to himself)
I guess a HALO drop is out of the question.

Tom dips his index and middle fingers into his water, and lifts them to his nostrils. He inhales forcefully and deeply, drawing the dripping water into his ravaged sinuses. He repeats this behavior twice more, until Heidi glares at him.

HEIDI
That's disgusting.

Tom drinks the remaining dipping water, then pulls out his IPHONE, opens the Notes application, and types:

"US govt torture methods involve sleep deprivation, uncomfortable positions, and rendition by AIRPLANE. Coincidence?"

INT. ATLANTA AIRPORT - MORNING

Our five travelers are camped at the gate, waiting for their Atlanta-Providenciales flight. The Kid is vigorously awake and playing on the chairs. Heidi and the two friends are each sipping COFFEES, chatting, and checking email with IPHONES.

Tom however is catching some sleep by lying on the floor by the window, using his FLEECE JACKET as a makeshift pillow. His breathing alternates between snoring and dry coughing.

EXT. PROVIDENCIALES AIRPORT - NOON

Our travelers blink in the bright sun, while guarding their PILE OF LUGGAGE. Tom approaches a local man carrying a BUDGET RENTAL SIGN.

TOM
We've got a reservation for a minivan.

LOCAL
YamanIgotchoorihea. Shuttlecominaboutoominna.

TOM
Great, thanks.

EXT./INT. RENTAL VAN - NOON

Tom takes the KEYS and hops into the air-conditioned van in the Budget lot. He smiles.

TOM
(pulling out of the Budget lot, talking to himself)
Stay left. Drive on the left!

Tom makes a left turn correctly, onto the Leeward Highway back towards the airport. He pulls up to the pile of luggage, and everyone loads.

EXT. PROVIDENCIALES LEEWARD HIGHWAY - NOON

Tom pilots the minivan through a two-lane ROUNDABOUT, sticking too-religiously to the outside lane, thereby causing the vehicle to swerve violently.

CUT TO:

INT. MINIVAN

HEIDI
Woah!

FEMALE FRIEND
(laughing)
Yee-haw!

MALE FRIEND
You're not doing that right.

TOM
Yes I am.

MALE FRIEND
You need to cut through the inside lane if you're going straight.

TOM
What? No. I'll hit the person trying to use the inside lane.

HEIDI
There wasn't anyone on the inside lane.

MALE FRIEND
You're a roundabout noob.

TOM
(irritated)
Look, shut up. I'm driving.

EXT. PROVIDENCIALES LEEWARD HIGHWAY - LATER

Tom sails the full minivan at high speed through a roundabout, cutting from the outside lane to the inside lane and back to the outside lane, completely ignoring all signaling, as if the roundabout wasn't even there. This causes the minivan to pass through completely smoothly.

CUT TO:

INT. MINIVAN

MALE FRIEND
There you go.

TOM
Hmmpf.

INT. PROVIDENCIALES COMFORT SUITES HOTEL ROOM - NIGHT

Luggage is piled on the couch and coffee table. The air conditioning is turned up to the highest setting. BLACKOUT BLINDS are drawn closed across the window.

HEIDI
(sliding into bed and fluffing the pillow)
Oh, wow, this feels so good.

TOM
(sliding into bed)
Ohmygod, awesome.

They are both asleep within seconds.

EXT. PROVIDENCIALES COMFORT SUITES HOTEL PATIO - MORNING

Tom and Heidi help themselves to the BREAKFAST BUFFET. Heidi gets cereal with milk and some chunks of fruit. Tom gets toast and a croissant, peanut butter, and jam. They both get orange juice.

At a patio table in partial shade, they eat while staring dazedly at the Christmas tree prominantly displayed at the edge of the swimming pool. Heidi picks at her cereal, then abandons it.

HEIDI
The milk tastes funny.

TOM
(tasting a spoonful)
It's probably that Parmalat stuff.

Tom hands Heidi some toast and half the croissant, and eats her cereal including all the milk. They finish with efficiency, grab additional glasses of juice, and head back towards their rooms to wake their friends.

Etymology and Entomology of the Nyerkroach

2009-10-13T17:02:00.000-07:00

It's a rare treat to be present at the genesis of a word, the very first time that it's ever used.

As a teen, I often wondered how slang got created. Who was the first one, the first person, to decide that "rad" would indicate approval, many moons ago? Or more recently, that "sketchy" would mean vague and unreliable and potentially dangerous? Did these words evolve organically, or were they consciously seeded into pliable minds?

I've been playing Aion recently, as briefly mentioned. It's a Korean MMO that's about a year old, retooled for the Western market. I was part of the closed beta, during which I played my usual Grammar Nazi and made sure that all of the translated quest dialogs for levels 1-10 were language-correct. Engrish, capitalization, grammar, spelling, I reported it all. The quests were cleaned up (meaning that they took all my suggestions to heart - amazing!) as a result, and the game has been in commercial release here for about a month.

Although I've been immensely enjoying the game, there have been growing pains for Aion:

The pre-order keys expired too early, leaving many of the early adopters (including me) unable to play during opening week until snail mail delivered the boxed editions.
There have been problems with huge (multi-hour) server queues, and people cheating to stay logged in as a result.
The NCsoft forums for the game have been largely nonfunctional, suffering from formatting and technical troubles. A community manager famously explained that the customer and community service reps weren't able to use their own forums, because of a bug. This resulted in public derision. As a result a fan-created forum has become the de facto official forum.
The Real Money Traders (gold sellers) from the Korean and Chinese versions have descended upon this version of the game in force, running farming bots everywhere and spamming all the chat and LFG channels with ads every few seconds.
The method for reporting gold sellers and bots has been restricted to normal business hours, and has been widely considered to be ineffective. The lack of penalty for botting has spawned tons more and better bots, from characters trying to keep up with the Joneses.
In response to the rampant botting and gold selling, NCsoft has unleashed a wave of many thousand account bans, ensnaring some number of innocent with the guilty, but unfortunately not noticeably affecting the bot population. When the "innocent" have complained, they've had their accounts reinstated, with a cryptic warning to not do what they did again, or risk permanent bans. Trouble is, some people really don't know what they did, and are therefore alarmed that they're hanging by a thread, without knowing what to do about it.
There's a significant memory leak in the game, that causes the client to inevitably and reproducibly increase in memory usage during large-scale battles, and then crash. This has been publicly and precisely analyzed and reported by customers, but hasn't been fixed. Oh, and the main claim to fame of the game is large-scale aerial PvP which, because of this bug, isn't viable. Whoops.
Most seriously, the public face of tech support for the game has been not-very-public, limited to a couple Twitter accounts and posts in the fan forum. Response to submitted trouble tickets has taken days on average. This has massively exacerbated all of the other issues.

The result is that whining about these issues, and name-calling of the whiners, and publicly ridiculing particularly bad bots, and engaging in civil disobedience, and arguing about whether Aion is doomed have dominated the forums, drowning out the one actually useful thread of suggestions.

No, not the official forums; no one uses them because they still suck. I mean the adopted forums.

Forums like these use a pretty standard method of profanity filter that replaces key words with something innocuous. On the Ducati Monster Forum, for example, the filter replaces "fuck" with "make the beast with two backs". This can lead to some odd constructs, like "He's so make the beast with two backsing stupid".

Now, there's this Aion merchant NPC race, the Shugo, which are (remember, it's an Asian MMO) disgustingly cute bipedal squirrelthings. They're all named somethingnerk (males) or somethingyerk (females). Example, "Chiyorinyerk", left.

These Shugos perhaps got their names from a sound that they make, a sort of nervous sentence-ender akin to "lol". Shugos say "nyerk", or "nyerk nyerk" as a kind of laugh or space filler just like the real life semi-retarded use "lol". (Urban Dictionary, "lol" definitions #47-1, 50, 73, 97)

In the unofficial Aion forums, the forum admins decided to use this cute expression ("nyerk", not "lol"; "lol" is neither cute nor expressive) for all their replacement text. So, "fuck" = "nyerk". "Bitching" = "nyerking". You get the idea. It's oddly suitable in this context, being both descriptive and funny.

Today, I read an interesting article on the forums, titled "A positive experience", in which an Aion customer, daring to buck the peer pressure, stated that he'd had a good experience so far. And there it was: the genesis of a word.

He'd meant to say this run-on sentence:

"Of course I would like to see all the RMT go away however they are like cockroaches for each one you ban 3 more will appear."

...but the profanity filter struck, replacing his "cock" with a "nyerk":

"Of course I would like to see all the RMT go away however they are like nyerkroaches for each one you ban 3 more will appear."

Presto, the nyerkroach was born, and used as a term for Real Money Traders!

Special moment. Language just evolved because of an odd convergence of game design, poor tech support, and automated profanity filtering. It's the birth of a totally new term, never once before seen.

Whether the term will stick isn't clear, but it was nevertheless an exciting thing to see. My thighs still feel a bit quivery.

It's A Good Day

2009-09-25T09:31:00.000-07:00

A document arrived from the County Courthouse, confirming that the "judgement" for my petition for name change is all filed and official. Nothing more to do!

My new SSN card arrived from the Social Security Administration. It's now tucked away in our safe, and finally reflects my real name!

A replacement license plate for my M1000 (the last one was either stolen or fell off) arrived from the DMV. Yay, I can ride my favorite bike again!

And I did!

A letter arrived from the previous registered owner (not the person I bought it from...) of my wife's Kawasaki KZ 650, containing documents releasing all interest in it. I'd asked him to execute those a month ago via certified mail, but had given up on ever hearing back, and was anticipating a nasty set of steps to proceed. They were even filled out right. What a welcome surprise!

This morning I took the KZ 650 title documents to the DMV, and paid the fee, and "the bike with the screwed up title" is now "our bike with the perfectly clean title". Bonus: they gave me a legitimate license plate, allowing me to retire the one that we'd been using, which doesn't match the bike at all, and which the seller had said "was from a different Kawasaki". Heh. Yay, the bike's official!

With a little luck, my boxed copy of Aion will arrive in the mail today. I've been playing the beta version, and the official release was this past Tuesday. It's great!

We're down to a mere 6 bugs between us and our new software release at work. So close!

I've got two brand-new, unwatched episodes of Sons of Anarchy waiting for me. In HD. With no commercials. For free!

I've got wild chinook salmon and tri-tip marinating in the fridge at home. Smoked salmon and barbecue this weekend!

It's Friday!

SupaNova

2009-08-29T17:42:00.000-07:00

One of the most common modifications for Ducati Monsters is the "tail chop", in which the rear frame and fender are trimmed for aesthetic reasons.

Many owners choose to integrate the rear turn signals into the tail light when doing this, for the cleanest and most compact appearance possible. So there's a brisk market in aftermarket brackets and lights for the Monster tail chop.

When I bought my first Monster, the M1000, it already had a chopped tail, complete with bracket (from Competition Werkes) and tail light with integrated turn signals (from Clear Alternatives).

The second Monster that my wife and I bought, an S4R, was nearly stock, and didn't have a tail chop. I took a hack saw, a Dremel tool, a sheet of aluminum, and some L brackets, and sorted it out. It wasn't pretty, but it worked.

When I went to purchase an integrated turn signal tail light for the S4R, I came across Ducati Monster Forum discussions of the SupaNova 490i, a premium Monster tail light with nearly 500 LEDs, and an optional "SupaBrake" algorithm that flashes the brake light for improved visibility.

After agonizing over the premium price, I bit the bullet and ordered one from Monsterparts, the sole distributor other than the designer. As it turned out, I got the last one that they had in stock. It was turn signal integrated and license light integrated, but didn't have the SupaBrake algorithm. Still, it was beautiful, and well worth the money.

After seeing the 490i and how it compared to the ancient Clear Alternatives tail light on my M1000, I really wanted to get a second SupaNova so that both bikes would have the very best. Clear Alternatives had newer (and probably better) models than the one that came with the M1000, but Clear Alternatives just weren't of the same quality as the SupaNova, and I'm a tech snob.

When I emailed the designer (Bernard at Vizi-Tec) and asked when he'd have more, he said, "never". Apparently the 490i was just too expensive and time consuming to produce, and was being retired. However, he mentioned, he was working on a new design that would be even better....

I placed a pre-order.

This past Friday, a box arrived from Vizi-Tec. Inside was the first beta unit of the new SupaNova HSi, along with a couple of the tail chop brackets that Vizi-Tec sells to go with the SupaNova. (Full disclosure: Bernard sold me the beta unit at the cost of the parts, since it was a beta, and since I had offered to write a review. I paid full retail for the brackets.)

The SupaNova HSi seemed, well, a bit ungainly. There was an external controller/power box thing that I really wasn't too happy about (space under the seat is always at a severe premium), and the light enclosure itself had fans and a heat sink, like it had been built by some crazed build-your-own-PC geek. I was a bit skeptical, yet eager to see how and whether it installed and performed well.

Today, I planned to install the brackets (replacing both my hand-made abomination, left, and the perfectly serviceable Competition Werkes bracket, middle, with the compact Vizi-Tec bracket, right). And then I would be on to the SupaNova HSi, taking the time as I did to document the process, and to shoot some comparison video.

For the tl;dr crowd, you may skip right to the video below. You'll miss a joke or two and some insight into engineers, though.

I pulled the two Monsters out of the garage, removed their tail lights and brackets, and started in fresh with the new equipment.

First thing that I noticed is that the brackets were outrageously over-engineered. In my work at a medical device manufacturer, we always always strive for the highest quality, yet acknowledge that there comes a time when "darn well good enough" is reached, and further delay to endlessly tweak a design has diminishing returns when compared to the benefits of getting a great product into customer hands.

Bernard apparently doesn't understand the phrase "good enough". Maybe it's that he does this as a hobby, or maybe it's that he worked for some place like Apple in a previous life. Whatever the reason, he chose to plow past "good enough" and head straight for "perfect" on these brackets. They're designed via CAD, cut out with CNC, and anodized (compare that to the bare metal Competition Werkes version). They fit precisely. They come with the right hardware, including bolts and lock nuts. In a crazy attention to detail, the holes for the license plate have captive nuts, a feature that's completely unnecessary from a technical perspective, but most welcome from a user experience standpoint. If you've ever lost your left nut while trying to attach a license plate, you understand.

So, why talk about the brackets? Well, because they're symptomatic of how Bernard does other things, as you can tell once you take a look at the SupaNova 490i or HSi. We're talking precision assembly like it came from a contract manufacturer. Painstaking cable strain relief and heat shrink, a perfectly machined enclosure, a custom low-profile heat sink, and a circuit board that looks like art. All this in a beta (pre-production) unit, a first build that could (if it so desired) be rough around the edges, and have a perfect excuse for being sloppy.

But it's not sloppy at all. I'm jealous and a bit awed.

I installed the bracket on the S4R in a couple minutes. I slapped a tail light in place, and plugged it in, and popped the seat back on. Easy. Everything fit.

When I went to the M1000 to replicate this, I ran into problems. The M1000 has an aftermarket Sargent seat, and, when I went to pop the seat back on, it didn't fit even with the stock light. The lights all stuck up too far because of the bracket. After a quick head scratch, I removed the bracket, and bolted it to the bottom of the bike frame (I'd bolted the S4R bracket to the top). Reattached the light, and ta-da. Everything fit.

Then I went through the cycle of videotaping pairs of lights, swapping them out in turn (four lights shown are, from left to right: stock, Clear Alternatives, SupaNova 490i, SupaNova HSi).

Stock versus Clear Alternatives. Check.

Clear Alternatives versus SupaNova 490i. Check.

SupaNova 490i versus SupaNova HSi...HOLY CRAP!

Bernard had warned me (twice, the second time in all capital letters) that the light was somewhat more than bright. After having a look at it from a distance of 6 or 8 feet, I had retinal afterimages, like you get from looking at the sun. We're talking silly bright. Painfully bright. Is-that-legal bright. The whole carport lit up red when I grabbed brake, and it was daytime. The video camera showed grainy purple digital artifacts above and below the light, and I was afraid that I'd permanently damaged it.

Okay.... So maybe the external controller box and heat sinks and fans really were necessary.

I giggled a bit, turned down the exposure on the video camera, and finished collecting video. Showed the HSi light to my wife, who said, and I quote, "Ow."

The original, highest-quality version of this video can be downloaded from here.

The remaining issue was permanent fitment of the HSi, and this took a bit of fiddling. That external power/control box had me worried. Bernard had recommended that I remove the document holder cover on the underside of the stock seat, to make room for the HSi box. But I had chosen the M1000 with the Sargent seat as the HSi destination, and I was reluctant to abandon that to go the easy route with a stock seat.

The Sargent seat has a different shape underneath, but this actually turned out to work perfectly well once I removed the manual from the tube thingy, leaving just the useless Ducati tool kit. Then the Sargent seat fit cleanly over the HSi box, sandwiching it between the tube and the undertray. The wiring was just barely not getting abused in this configuration, and the seat fit like a champ. A couple zipties to attach the box to a strap, and I was good to go!

The S4R got the 490i, and M1000 got the HSi. The old brackets and old lights were tossed into my ever-growing parts box.

Time for some video editing, writing, and reflection!

So, what do I think of the SupaNova HSi?

Well, I'm concerned that it's too bright. Seriously.

Brightness and visibility have collectively been the Holy Grail of tail light design, and the HSi absolutely delivers on both counts. Viewing angle is great, light output is silly huge, and the SupaBrake algorithm is eye-grabbing in the same way that flashing lights make emergency vehicles stick out like sore thumbs. But at least in Oregon, there's a problem with the current design.

The Oregon Vehicle Code, Chapter 816, Section 100, Clause 7, says:

Brake lights shall not project a glaring or dazzling light.

Oops.

There's absolutely no way in hell that I could go before a traffic judge, show her the SupaNova HSi, and tell her "No, ma'am, I don't consider that dazzling". And, with it turned up to 11 like it currently is, such a visit to traffic court would likely occur the first time a cop happened to be even vaguely behind me, regardless of whether it was day or night.

Bernard, you're completely crazy, but in a good way. You've surpassed what is necessary, gone all the way to what is desirable, passed that, crashed through obnoxiously good, and flung yourself at the OMFG wall of fame.

I like it a whole lot. But can I get this thing turned back down to, oh, say 6 or 7?

UPDATE: Bernard says that he'll turn the thing down a bit for me. He also mentions that he's only driving the light at about 60% of its capacity, even in this beta unit. Huh.

No Papers Required - Have A Driving Quiz Instead

2009-08-18T17:39:00.000-07:00

I went to the DMV this morning to get that temporary extension to my expiring license, to allow time for the grueling satanic rituals required for sorting out things with the Social Security Administration.

I took with me all of the weird and wonderful supporting documents from my epic mount quest chain yesterday, just in case.

The woman at the counter listened to my explanation of the need for a temporary license, and then said, "Huh, we ought to just be able to use the other name at SSA."

Wait, what?

"Uh, no," I explained, "I'm looking for a driver's license with my current name, thanks." A license with the old name didn't seem very helpful, and in fact might end up causing me to be stopped at a government checkpoint, then leashed and assaulted by Lynndie England.

"No, I mean we ought to be able to just use the old name for SSN verification. Your license would stay the same." No assaults by military police storm troopers. That sounded nice.

"Uh...you can do that?"

"Sure. Let me see the documents that you have for the name that they have on record. I'll just enter the other name as an AKA." You must learn the ways of the Force if you're to come with me to Alderaan.

"Well, there are actually two other names, see, uh.... It's a long story." I held my breath. These aren't the droids you're looking for.

"No problem. I'll enter both names, so that you don't have problems later." You can go about your business.

And that was that. Five minutes later, the digital gatekeepers were mollified by some incredibly lucky Jedi mind tricks, and I had successfully renewed my driver's license.

"Excuse me. What was your name again?"

"[her name]."

"[her name], thank you. You've just made my day."

She smiled, and I left, feeling slightly bouncy. This is the weapon of a Jedi Knight. Not as clumsy or random as a blaster; an elegant weapon for a more civilized age.

Which brings me to my post-work browse through netnews.

Slashdot, Digg, Consumerist, Craigslist, Wired, BBC, all the usual stuff. One of them had a link to "Could You Pass a Driving Test?". Which seemed to be highly topical, and entertaining, and a reasonable source of blogfodder. I scored a respectable 83%, missing the following three questions:

About what percentage of collisions involve alcohol?
(I guessed too conservatively)

When do pedestrians have the right of way?
(I disagree with their answer. I'm right; they're wrong.)

You may not park within how many feet of a stop sign?
(I guessed too conservatively)

If you correct for the error in the test (the answer where I'm right, and they're wrong), I actually scored 89%. Not bad, considering that the writers of the test only scored 94%, since they missed one too.

Looks like I get to keep my license.

I've still got a court date in two weeks, though. Huh.

Your Papers Please

2009-08-17T12:05:00.001-07:00

It seems that I'm spending a lot of time at the DMV lately, what with overlapping renewals and registrations for three cars and four motorcycles.

I went to the DMV at 8:30 this morning to get my driver's license renewed. Having carefully reviewed their mailing describing the necessary supporting documentation, I took along my current driver's license, my passport, tax records showing my Social Security Number, and a $100 bill (they only take cash or a check).

Everything was going swimmingly until the nice lady said, "huh, the SSN doesn't match".

A vision of the seventh circle of hell opened up before me. Flames, tongs, and pointy things loomed, and no happy Zen thoughts were going to save me.

Afraid of the answer that I already knew, I asked, "Oh, what do you mean?" She turned the monitor towards me, and said "That's the number you gave me. I've double checked it, but the Social Security Agency isn't showing that it matches. See this "N"? You're going to have to go down there and sort it out before I can renew your license."

Apparently the DMV omitted to mention on their "supporting documentation" list that an additional required supporting document was "SSA records agree with your documents".

I began to sweat from the heat from below. This was going to be ugly. I smelled burned hair.

Until today, the actual content of the records at the SSA (the name attached to the SSN) hasn't been all that important. My passport, driver's license, CHL, Selective Service registration, credit records, and tax documents all use my current name, my SSN, and my current address. The fact that there's a different, older name on record at the SSA hasn't been an issue. Until now.

Off to the SSA on Coburg, where I waited in a line of about 20 people for them to open at 9 AM. I took a number, waited some more while a woman next to me snored in her seat, and then talked briefly to the woman behind the counter. In short order she declared, "well, either you've had a legal name change before, in which case you need to get those documents from the court, or you'll need to go get a name change now."

Fuck. I could feel my flesh starting to blister. One of my fingernails felt like something had been jammed under it, too.

Off to the courthouse. I parked in the city parking, walked to the courthouse ("oops, wrong one, you want the county courthouse over there"), walked to the second courthouse, went through security ("I'll need your belt too, please"), played on the elevator for a while, and finally talked briefly to a county clerk (civil and domestic). She said that they didn't supply the forms for a name change (what?), and that I'd have to get them somewhere else. Full of trepidation, I asked where, and she said (and I quote) "we're not supposed to recommend a source". Wait, what?

I was fairly certain that my crotch hair was aflame.

After a bit of prodding at it, I finally understood. I had to get and file documents for a legal petition for name change, just like a lawyer might. There wasn't one single correct way to do that, rather there existed form blanks from several competing sources. The clerk wasn't supposed to favor a particular source. However, Willamette Stationers on 5th and Oak was the closest place likely to have these blank legal documents. I'd have to go get the forms, and come back.

Apparently one of my ears had just burned completely up, and fallen off. I surreptitiously kicked it under the clerk's counter, and smoothed my hair back.

I walked to Willamette Stationers. I purchased the "Name Change, Adult" packet, then walked back to the county courthouse ("belt too please"), and waited in line to see the same clerk. She instructed me in the proper way to fill out the forms, including using "AKA" to enter two names where it said "name". That was pretty cool. I retired to a bench to fill in the first two forms (of six). Then I waited in line to see the clerk again, but managed to get a different one. She slashed the two forms with a yellow highlighter, and said, "You'll have to fill in these other parts, too".

Some minor demon was rubbing salt into the raw flesh of my charred skull, while shrieking "take it, you know you want it, grab yer fackles, wubbie!" I didn't understand everything that was being said, but I sure didn't like it.

I updated the form while the clerk (and the 12 people behind me) waited. Then some notarization, a peek at my driver's license as ID ("It's nearly expired." "Yes, I know."), and $99 as a filing fee. Then I took a copy of the petition 30 feet down the hall, and posted it in an unlocked case with a stack of other petitions, where it'll sit for two weeks to make sure that no one objects. Not that many people would know to look there, to see if they objected. Silly "letter of the law" provision.

Anyhow, I've got a court date in two weeks, wherein I submit some more of the 6 forms (notarized), and talk to a judge for perhaps 30 seconds (unless he wants to hear the whole backstory of how I got into this situation, in which case he'll have to clear his docket for the morning).

Before then, I'll have to get a temporary driving permit at the DMV good for 90 days. They'll punch my driver's license when I do that, making it no good for ID. So I'll have to use the passport when I get things notarized.

After the court date, I'll take the judge's signature on my form back to the county court clerk, and she'll file things, and notarize things some more. I'll get an official certified copy of the court order of name change from her. This is worth its weight in gold.

Then I'll have to post a copy of judge's decree in the same technically public display case for another two weeks, then come get it and return it and another of my forms to that clerk. She'll do some more filing.

I'll go to the DMV...oh, nope, wait. I'll go to the SSA, where I'll show them the name change decree, and apply for a new SSN card in the new name. Hopefully they don't ask for my father's SSN when I apply. NO idea where I'll get that. I also hope that the "two into one" name change document that I'll have from the courts is what they're expecting.

Anyhow, once the SSA records are all updated, I'll go back to the DMV and apply for a driver's license (apparently a new one, since the old one will have expired). If their computer says that the SSA computer says that the SSN I give matches the name that I give, I'll be allowed on the roads.

If not, I'll simply grab some ice water, and a Nomex suit, and plunge into the abyss. It'll hurt less than the alternative.

I'm sure that they have motorcycles in hell, at least.

UPDATE: My passport expires in 2011. That ought to be fun, too.

Surly Man

2009-08-14T17:04:00.001-07:00

It's been a long week.

At work, we've had a collaborator visiting from out of the country, to work on engineering and business interactions with us. Since Monday, there have been a dazzling array of meetings with him, starting at 9 AM, going through lunch, and ending at 5 PM. As our technical lead, I've been fortunate enough to need to attend nearly every session. All day. Every day. Plus arrange the agenda, wrangle the ever-changing list of attendees, and keep notes.

These episodes have been immensely successful technically and strategically. They've also been exhausting, draining, numbing.

This morning, I was feeling more than a little surly, eager to have the week over. My first appointment: a 9 AM Python (nope, not a snake) and C++ millisecond-timing code review. Ugh.

As an antidote to my frustrations, I pulled my favorite motorcycle out of the garage and suited up in my black spaceman gear. I admit that I gave the throttle a few more (and more vigorous) twists than were strictly necessary, to start it. Our carport boomed with the deep exhaust, and the neighbor's windows rattled dangerously.

I grinned for the first time of the day.

I pulled out of the driveway, and bent forward a bit, grabbing the gas tank with my knees. I cranked the throttle with vigor and the front wheel got light as I blasted down the first two blocks in first gear, tach and speedo sweeping alarmingly quickly to the right.

Second grin.

Leaving the bike in gear, I backed off the throttle to avoid becoming airborne. Engine braking in first gear on that bike makes a particularly loud and low-frequency exhaust note that rattles your bones. Car alarms squealed in protest to either side of me as I shot past university housing. "It's 8 AM, summer students bishes! GTFU!"

Third grin.

Coming off seventh towards Franklin Boulevard, I stopped at a light right by the new courthouse, all seething black and grey and red, engine growling and grumbling. Perfect stop, left foot only to the pavement, slight lean just as I stopped. I was the only one at the light.

To my left: a handful of protesters. They had a variety of signs, "Taxed Enough Already", "Say no to Obama", "NObama", "Don't touch my healthcare". The entire group looked towards me, and one of the protesters popped an overeager, caffeinated grin. He waved his sign at me, shouting words of camaraderie. I leisurely and slowly raised the middle finger of my left hand, arm fully extended, my teeth bared behind the deep-tinted face shield. I held their shocked gaze for a four count. The light changed, and I oh-so-slowly growled off towards work, leaving behind a slightly less confident group of right-wing protesters.

Fourth grin. I wondered whether I looked cool doing that. I reckoned I did. A lot.

I pulled in to work all chuckles, and my day went swimmingly.

Gaming Booyah

2009-08-13T12:05:00.000-07:00

As I previously mentioned, the new social game Booyah was recently released for iPhone. It's a neat idea that fell flat on its digital avatar's bobblehead.

My chief complaint with it is that it requires Facebook (and Facer "friends") for anything resembling sustained use. All of the achievements past the first 36 are based upon Likes and Comments from Facers. That's unnecessarily monotonous self-masturbation, and too social for my likes, and (as we'll see) a pointless and irritating hurdle for anyone who knows jack shit about Facebook account creation.

After poking about, I've learned a couple interesting things about Booyah.

It's in a pre-monetization phase. The application is meant to turn a profit eventually through some combination of micro-transaction upgrades to your avatar (the guy with the big head) and retail partners paying for ad space and/or for customers driven their way.

The Booyah team has said that they intentionally did Facebook and Twitter first as a means of validating claims. They say that other options (like using GPS) for validation are being considered, and will likely be rolled out later.

Apparently the issue is that the number and nature of achievements will become more important later, and so spoofing of achievements will detract from their relationship with their commercial partners. As the application currently stands, there's little reason to want to spoof achievements. Sure, some people would lie about their achievements just to "win" the game. But many (me included) would use Booyah as a fun way to encourage interesting and novel real-world adventures, if only those adventures weren't all of the nature of "post something to Facebook".

If Booyah becomes highly monetized (which it probably will) and achievement points become a form of user currency, that's no longer true. Then there'd be a real incentive for me and for others to generate bogus points through gaming the system. Cheat at Booyah, get gobs of participation points, trade them in for a free Moolatté (unless you know where the word "mulatto" comes from, and consider Dairy Queen to be racially insensitive for naming their black and white drink a "moolatté").

This does beg the question: how might one effectively spoof Booyah achievements?

It's not at all hard for the current architecture. I more-or-less spoofed the first 36 of 108 achievements with a single dummy Facebook account, in the time that it took me to type 36 different one-sentence posts to the correct categories. I actually posted things that were true, so it wasn't really spoofing, but it would have worked just as well if I had typed a single word of gibberish, since I got to self-select the topic under which the post counted.

I was stopped from completing the second and third stages of Booyah achievements only because I didn't have access to enough other Facebook accounts to enter Comments and Likes. I could have asked 10 real accounts to pad all my Booyah posts with mindless Likes and dummy Comments, and I'd have been 108/108. Or, I could have generated 10 additional dummy Facebook accounts myself, simply by creating that many email addresses, and used those to get 108/108.

In fact, once I had those 10 dummy accounts, I could have done the same "boosting" for anyone else who wanted it, using that hit squad of ten "validators". This was all interesting to work through as a mental exercise, but quite frankly Booyah itself wasn't worth the effort.

Booyah's creators are therefore both annoying to me (by requiring Facebook or Twitter for participation) and foolish (by thinking that Facebook or Twitter count as validation). They've also apparently not thought through the whole "receive random comments from Booyah users without any moderation" problem.

Fun fun. Imagine what happens when users decide that Booyah is a good avenue for spam and unsolicited advertisement Tweets, instead of just pointless vulgarity.

To their feeble credit, Booyah have recently added 20 "GPS achievements for going to real-world destinations and landmarks such as Times Square in NY or the Louvre in Paris". But I'm still not stoked. Having 20 meatspace locations to visit? Blah. Make that 20,000, and add the sort of interesting personal improvement elements that I suggested earlier:

Reach an Exercise Personal Best
Make a New Recipe for a Friend
Watch a Movie at the Theater on Opening Night
Visit a New Country
Try a New Sport

...and we'll talk.

Buhbye Booyah. You've been uninstalled, until such time as you have real and interesting achievements to play with, or monetized achievement points for me to spoof for free sugary coffee drinks from the conglomerates.

Homeless, or Scientist?

2009-08-06T16:59:00.000-07:00

Our parking lot at work butts up against the railroad tracks, beyond which is a no-mans land of shrubs and trees, and then the river. This dead space is a favorite with the homeless, especially during the summer.

Our building complex, being near the University, contains several small incubator businesses and administrative spinoffs from Uni life. Consequently, the building is a frequent destination for scientists and faculty.

Today, arriving back at work after lunch, I noticed a somewhat grubby man in faded brown corduroy crossing our parking lot and then the street, heading towards the University. He had a hunted, hollow look on his face, and looked about himself nervously as he went. He was carrying a tattered messenger bag slung over one shoulder.

Homeless, or Scientist? I couldn't tell.

Ordained (Again)

2009-07-31T12:05:00.000-07:00

My wife recently pointed out (after we'd been listening to songs from Sons of Anarchy) that I'm in fact a "son of a preacher man". This got me thinking....

Not many of my readers realize that, through a weird convergence of circumstance (it was the easiest way to continue dating a particular high school girlfriend) and technicality (they never got around to excommunicating me for all of my subsequent enthusiastic transgressions in the areas of sexuality, drug use, lawlessness, blasphemy, support for equal rights, consumption of vulgar, immoral, violent, and pornographic multimedia, free thinking, disobedience, dishonesty, unrepentance, irreverance, failure to keep the Sabbath, complete lack of tithing, and general apostasy), I'm an Aaronic priest of the Mormon faith.

This sounds impressive, but really isn't good for much. Aaronic priests are a dime a dozen for Latter-day Saints. Sure, they get to prepare and bless the sacrament, baptize, and ordain others (imposed self-replication, like a virus). But I'd rather drink coffee and think for myself. That whole going around knocking on doors thing is pretty fucked up, too.

So, meh. I don't even carry the card in my wallet anymore.

Recently, after a period of spiritual quasi-emptiness (it's been really hot here) and self-reflection (while brushing my teeth in front of the mirror), I discovered what I believe is a new calling. Oddly, it's one that I've been close to, and affected by, for a number of years. The approach to life, the patterns of thought, and the underlying language have been with me in one way or another for a decade, and in fact have colored posts to this very blog, not to mention my daily life.

It's only recently, though, that I learned of the expanding possibilities of this new faith. Since that time (this morning around 7:30), I've been fasting and thinking about whether this path is right for me. After nearly 5 hours of soul-searching, and some work-related stuff, I've determined that, indeed, it just feels right. The spirit moves me.

And thus, after uttering a prayer to the gods of PHP, I've formally and officially joined the ranks of over 50,000 other Dudeism priests world-wide.

So now I'm a priest of the church of Latter-day Saints (not in good standing), and a priest of the church of Latter-day Dudes (in good standing). It's an odd and pleasing symmetry.

Basking in the glow, I'm debating whether I should get a mug, an embossed ordination certificate, a Dudefish, or all three. Either way, I'm finally (as a Dudeist priest, not as an Aaronic priest) able to preside over weddings, funerals, and other celebrations, whereas the most I could do before was participate.

It's a good day to be alive.

Oh yeah. I'm watching Sons of Anarchy again this week. Just finished episode 6. I'm gonna watch The Big Lebowski again, too, of course. It's like a sacrament.

Booyah! Oh, Wait, Nevermind

2009-07-28T12:30:00.000-07:00

In World of Warcraft, like most MMOs, there's an aspect of "grinding", repeating a game task over and over to achieve a larger goal. It's repetitive, and abrasive, and might involve meat.

For example, killing 10 wild boars, collecting their imaginary legs, then returning those legs to an imaginary butcher to collect a little imaginary progress token. Repeat that, and you accumulate tokens. Get enough tokens, say maybe 100, and you'll be able to turn them in for, oh, perhaps the title "Boar Bane", something that you can wear around on your imaginary character so that others all know that you've killed way too many imaginary boars.

Despite being easy to ridicule, these time sinks are essential to the game; they offer a sense of purpose, the ability to customize your character, and sufficient things to do in game so that you don't get bored for a long time. In fact, one of the things that Blizzard, the makers of World of Warcraft, did in their latest expansion was to formalize and expand these achievements, to offer additional raison d'être. There are now hundreds of these WoW achievements, and an interface for tracking them and your progress.

Given how WoW slips over into the real world, I've previously applied this terminology of character improvement to self improvement, saying that I was "going to level up chest and abs" or "gonna go grind cardio for a while". It's intriguing (and way geeky) to think of your real self as a character, and consider what you'd like to do on a given day to improve that character.

Not surprising, then, that some ex-Blizzard employees have just created an iPhone application that applies aspects of gaming, achievements, rewards, character improvement, titles, and grinding to...meatspace! Welcome to Booyah, a game where you complete achievements to gain titles and recognition, and unlock "levels". There are categories of achievement for Food & Dining, Fitness, Entertainment, Shopping, Work & School, Arts & Culture, Social, Travel, and Passions.

The idea is that, in the quest for Booyah game achievements, you'll do things that are more interesting than if you didn't play. You'll seek out noteworthy events in real life, so that they can be added to your list of cool. You'll do more things worth bragging about.

I discovered Booyah late last night, while I was poking around the underbelly of the net looking for nipples. The idea grabbed me, the iPhone application "Booyah Society" was free, and so I downloaded it straight away.

I created a character, explored the interface, and quickly discovered that the only way to earn achievements was via Facebook or Twitter. Achievements looked like this:

Food Flicker: Write 1 Food & Dining Post
Industrious Imbiber: Receive 1 Like for a Food & Dining Post within 2 Days
Gourmand of Impeccable Taste: Receive 8 Comments within 5 Days for a Food & Dining Post

...and so on.

Huh.

Now, I'm not a big fan of Facebook because of the whole "social" thing.

But I'm also reluctant to engage Facebook because of the shocking loss of privacy that it encourages. It's a bit like the Google mothership that way, only more obviously and with greater and finer-grained encouragement. Facers are under peer pressure to publicly recite their name, picture, gender, birthday, hometown, neighborhood, family members, relationship status, political views, religious views, email addresses, IM screennames, phone numbers, address, website, friends, videos, and a steady stream of comments about what they're doing each day, and where. Plus 25 intimate things that people don't know. Plus a list of favorite movies, books, and places. And so on, baring huge amounts of detail.

Yes, these things can be restricted to being viewable only by friend Facers, if you're careful. But, they're all available to the Facebook corporation, forever, too. And anyone who subpoenas the information. Couple that with the ease of you or your Facer friends or your mobile applications casually posting to this perfectly enduring record, and you start running into troubles.

But I wanted to explore Booyah, and so I created a dummy Facebook account. I disabled all the public information sharing that I could, omitted all detail that wasn't necessary, skipped through all the adding friends BS, and then pointed Booyah Society at the account.

In short order I had ground through all the "Write 1" and "Write 3" and "Write 10" posts for each of the achievement categories (using real content, not dummy posts), and I had earned a respectable 36/108 achievements*. The remaining achievements were all "Receive 1 Like" or "Receive 10 Likes" or "Receive 1 Comment" or "Receive 8 Comments".

And there I was stuck. Booyah Society is unavoidably Facebook, and unavoidably linked to having Facer friends. You simply cannot play past this point without having at least several Facers marking up your entries with Likes and Comments. No, you cannot do it yourself; I tried. The Booyah Society application correctly deduces that a Like or Comment from your own account doesn't count towards your achievement.

So much for Booyah.

What I was hoping for was something a bit more real-world, and a bit less Facebook. I'd anticipated that the Booyah achievements would be something like:

Reach an Exercise Personal Best
Make a New Recipe for a Friend
Watch a Movie at the Theater on Opening Night
Visit a New Country
Try a New Sport

...and so on. But they're not. Every single achievement is about posting to (or receiving feedback from) Facebook or Twitter, with nothing more specific than a topic. Sure, you can write a post about making a new recipe. But you could also post "I like carrots", and call that a food post achievement.

The big trouble is this: you cannot play the Booyah game unless you post on Facebook or Twitter. It's social-centric, not real world centric.

This is fine for Twits and Facers. But it's not so good for the more antisocial gamer. The "game of real world achievements" idea is great, but the Booyah implementation is flawed, at least for me. Add in achievements that aren't slaved to Facebook, and that are a bit more specific with regards to the real world, and Booyah will be a winner.

Oh, and some PvP action would be nice, too.

* MATH GEEKS: Euler in particular would find these two numbers (36 and 108) interesting with respect to each other. If you're a mathematician, you'll now have to figure out why, or go insane. No cheating.

Anarchy!

2009-07-21T17:20:00.000-07:00

I've been watching a new show, Sons of Anarchy, on FX. Well, not on FX. Rather, I procured Season 1 through devious means, and uploaded it to my Apple TV, and have been enjoying every minute in high-definition ad-free glory.

Do I feel like I'm violating the implicit social contract that TV viewers supposedly have with TV stations and advertisers? Um, no. But I am a rebel!

The show's about a motorcycle gang in sleepy (and fictional) Charming, California. It's written by Kurt Sutter, the same guy who did The Shield, a gritty cop drama with unlikely, flawed, deeply interesting characters.

Not surprisingly, Sons of Anarchy is a gritty biker drama with unlikely, flawed, deeply interesting characters. And baby, we got lots. Sociopaths, medical marijuana users, lovable ex-cons, Elvis impersonators, IRA sympathizers, corrupt policemen, deviant ATF agents, lolly-sucking arsonists. And of course The Prospect, "Half-Sack".

And action. Shootings, stabbings, explosions, mutilations, sex with corpses, racial hatred, Mad Max-esque fuel truck assaults, girl-on-girl skateboard action, projectile vomiting, you name it.

And motorcycles. Mostly Harley-Davidsons, though occasionally a sport bike will pop up long enough for its pilot to be shot or educated.

And strong women. REALLY strong women. Scrappy, "oh-my-god-I-can't-believe-that-she-just-did-that" women who make you laugh out loud with delight. The show's matriarch, Gemma (looking completely hot, left), is fiercely territorial and protective, ruthless, and blunt. Watching Jax's love interest Tara stand toe-to-toe with Gemma is awesome.

Great music? Check. The soundtrack is carefully-chosen, eclectic stuff that has broadened my already bizarre musical horizons. Some of the scenes are so tightly and expertly tied to the music that they're essentially music video vignettes within the episodes.

My SoA musical favorites are covers of songs that (1) were created specifically for the show, (2) aren't released anywhere, and (3) are better than any other versions of the same song. Specifically, "Forever Young" by Audra Mae (a special version with lyrics only and no music), "Son of a Preacher Man" by Katey Sagal (who is the actress wife of Kurt Sutter, and who plays Gemma in the show), and "John the Revelator" by Stigers & The Forrest Rangers (this is the song used to close Season 1, in an extraordinary, moving, nearly dialog-free funeral sequence).

Sons has a recurring theme of family, and of family loyalty. Because of that, and because of the jaw-droppingly three-dimensional characters, the bikers in the show are almost universally enjoyable, either purely on their own merits or as flawed anti-heroes. It's reminiscent of The Godfather, but with lots less pasta and considerably more motorcycles. It's also loosely patterned after the Hamlet archetypes and characters and plot, something that you wouldn't necessarily notice without thinking about it. But there's a ghost of the father, and a usurper on the throne (Claudius/Clay), and a queen (Gertrude/Gemma), and a coming of age, and a reckoning. Plus skeletons literal and literary.

It's an extraordinarily good show that delivers on many levels. Really amazing stuff. I watched it completely through, then persuaded my wife to watch "just one" episode. She was hooked. She made it through to about mid-season in a mad orgy of episodes, then we both persuaded a friend to watch it with us. All three of us watched the whole thing from the start, through to the end of the season, and are debating starting over from the beginning again. It's that good.

Season 2 (now with 100% more Henry Rollins) starts in September, a consolation prize for the end of summer.

Gun Control: How's That Working Out For Ya?

2009-07-03T13:06:00.000-07:00

In 1997, after a former scout leader shot and killed 16 children, their teacher, and himself in Dunblane Primary School, the British government passed the Firearms (Amendment) (No. 2) Act 1997, which essentially banned all private ownership of handguns in the UK.

Since that time, the number of recorded violent crimes in the UK has soared by 77%, according to reports released by the European Commission and the United Nations. Today, here's how the UK stacks up in the area of violent crime:

Good show!

In comparison, the gun-loving United States clocks in with a violent crime rate more than 4 times lower.

But we do have our own cesspits of violence. Our state with the highest violent crime rate is the District of Columbia, which has the most restrictive gun laws in the United States. In 1976, DC passed the Firearms Control Regulations Act, requiring that firearms kept at home be “unloaded, disassembled, or bound by a trigger lock or similar device.” It also required that all privately owned firearms be registered, and prohibited possession of any handgun purchased after Feb. 5, 1977. And, concealed carry in DC is entirely prohibited, even if you could own a handgun there.

Since DC imposed its 1976 laws, its murder rate has risen 200%, while the overall US murder rate rose 9%. Today, our nation's capital has a violent crime rate of 1,500 per 100,000 - nearly as impressive as that of the UK.

Then there's Maine. No permit is required to purchase or possess a rifle, shotgun, or handgun. Concealed carry permits are issued to all who request, and who pass the usual legal requirements (not a felon, not nucking futs). Maine feels strongly about self-preservation; it's a Castle Doctrine state, with a stand-your-ground law.

Maine's violent crime rate is 116 per 100,000, or about a thirteenth that of DC, and about a seventeenth that of the UK.

Oregon? No permit is required to purchase or possess a rifle, shotgun, or handgun. Concealed carry permits are issued to all who request, and who pass the usual legal requirements. Violent crime rate is 280 per 100,000, about a seventh that of the UK.

The UK doesn't have a gun problem per se; the number of violent crimes involving guns there is relatively low. Nope, it looks more like the UK has a violent crime problem caused by a lack of guns.

Oh, and a knife problem. Knives are carried with eye-popping frequency in the UK: nearly half of 15-17 year-olds admit to carrying knives, and a fifth of 16 year-old boys there admits to actually attacking someone with a knife. Incidents of knife carrying have increased 60% between 1999 and 2004. This in spite of a boatload of legislation in the UK:

Prevention of Crime Act (1953) - No carrying of weapons in public allowed.
Restriction of Offensive Weapons Act (1959) - No carrying of quick-open knives. No making, selling, buying, lending, or renting them either.
Criminal Justice Act (1988) - No martial arts weapons allowed. No sharp pointy things in public, we mean it!
Offensive Weapons Act (1996) - No selling of knives to anyone under 16.
Knives Act (1997) - No selling of knives "suitable for use as a weapon for inflicting injury on a person or causing a person to fear injury"

and most recently:

Violent Crime Reduction Act (2006) - No selling of knives to anyone under 18. No crossbows either.

Result? EPIC FAIL.

Oregon is a bit unusual in the area of knife law. Most states ban "switchblades" and other quick-open knives. Oregon totally doesn't care. Want a knife that opens quickly? Oregon sees nothing wrong with that. You're not allowed to carry them concealed, but a switchblade knife is nothing special. Oregon's knife violence, given such permissive laws? About 20 people died from knife attacks in Oregon last year. That's the same as the number of teenagers who died from knife attacks in the UK in 2004, in spite of all their laws about pointy things. London had more than 50,000 stabbings or attempted stabbings in that period, too. Oregon...uh...didn't.

Huh.

I'm being sneaky, and omitting (so far) the flip side of the argument. There are obviously benefits to public access to firearms, namely greatly reducing the overall incidence of violent crime, as shown above. But there is a downside that I'd be remiss not to examine.

Our per capita rate of murder committed with firearms is massive in comparison to the rest of the world, some 27 times that of the UK.

It's tempting to say that guns (or access to guns) cause gun homicides, and that the high gun homicide rate in the US is a result of the high gun ownership in the US. But if firearms directly or indirectly caused or encouraged murder, then Switzerland would have high firearm murder rates. The exact opposite is true. So it's something more complicated than pure access. A gun culture doesn't cause a wave of gun violence. Switzerland is proof.

So what the hell is it? We in the US clearly have a gun violence problem. Specifically, a big city gun violence problem. If one ignores Washington DC and the US cities that are larger than Canadian cities, the murder rates in the US are not much higher than Canadian homicide rates.

If you believe that trying to reduce weapon ownership (like in DC and the UK) historically doesn't work to reduce crime, and if you believe that countries like Switzerland can be awash in machine guns and handguns, and still have incredibly low crime, violent crime, murder and gun violence rates, then you have to wonder what it is that causes violent crime, and gun violence.

Switzerland obviously has something that works for them. The UK clearly does not, and is reaching the point of trying to ban sharp sticks to fight the problem. The US is successful in preventing massive violent crime, but hasn't figured out how to prevent gun violence in our largest cities in the way that Switzerland has.

My best guess is that it's the training and exposure to proper gun use, coupled with access for everyone. Switzerland has gobs of guns, and everyone in the whole country knows exactly how to use them. And so everyone treats guns (and their neighbors) with respect. No crime, no gun crime, and no one in their right mind would ever try to invade the country. Sounds pretty good.

Still, I've got no clue how we could get our inner cities out of their cycle of gun violence. Giving everyone in Los Angeles machine guns and military training is probably not going to work out well.

For my part, I'm eager to teach all my friends proper and safe gun use, and to talk to them about whether and when I'd use a firearm as lethal force. And, I'm always happy to ridicule DC and the UK for persisting in laws and policies that are clearly gross failures.

Glad I'm in Oregon.

Happy July 4th!

Hardee's B-Hole

2009-07-02T16:59:00.001-07:00

Not to be outdone by Quiznos or Burger King, Hardee's is tossing their hole into the food porn ring with this ad:

You gotta check out the supporting web site, too.

Bold. I can't help but think of a certain famous SNL sketch.

Mall Culture

2009-07-01T21:05:00.000-07:00

My wife and I took a four-day vacation this past weekend, and flew down to Southern California to visit friends. It'd been years since I'd spent leisure time in the area. My most recent visits were to go to trade shows at the Anaheim Convention Center (which hardly counts as leisure time and, given the lack of a car for those trips, doesn't allow the SoCal experience, as you'll shortly understand).

Really, the last chance I'd had to hang out in the LA area was during college, when I lived in Pasadena. So this was a fun chance to return to old stomping grounds, though a bit more to the south. And, since the friends we were visiting are long-time residents, we were able to enjoy the benefit of their familiarity with the area, and mooch off them for transport. We had a great time visiting, catching up, relaxing. Best of all, it was a fine opportunity for people-watching and the formulation of some of my insightful, inflammatory, and insipid social commentary. Which this is.

We arrived at John Wayne Airport in Orange County ("the OC") on Friday afternoon.

Now, first things first. You gotta realize that Los Angeles isn't really a city so much as it is a region. Take a look at a satellite map of the area, and you'll see that there's basically one continuous paved chunk of land extending from Santa Monica and San Fernando in the north west, to Riverside and San Bernardino to the east, and then south to Dana Point and San Clemente. It's only because of an interruption by the Camp Pendleton Marine Corps Base that the Los Angeles city-area doesn't extend all the way to San Diego and Tijuana. Freaking amazing.

In William Gibson's books Neuromancer (published 25 years ago today), Count Zero, and Mona Lisa Overdrive, he refers to a massive city-area called the Boston-Atlanta Metropolitan Axis, or "BAMA", or "The Sprawl", which is basically one big contiguous city that stretches from Boston to Atlanta. Seems fantastic, until you look at the LA area. It's "The Sprawl", "LAMA", made real. Something like 15 million people, or 20 million if you count San Diego and Tijuana.

Anyhow: the airport. When we met friends there, we were starved, so we hopped across the road to an El Torito. The food was pretty good, and we consumed amazing quantities of ice water, lemonade, freshly made chips, and salsa before exiting into the blast furnace of the parking lot.

A few minutes in the car with the AC maxed out, and we arrived at our hotel near where our friends lived (the friends' guest accommodations were limited, so a hotel seemed easiest). The hotel was in a combo strip mall and business park, where it joined a Starbucks (yay!), a donut shop improbably named "Bagel Donut", some chain pizza place, Wahoo's (a fish taco chain that I sadly never got to visit), a four-story bank monolith, and a Thai Garden Noodle and Grill.

Remember that last name for a funny story later.

After checking in and ditching our luggage, we left to go to the beach down by Dana Point, which is kinda the southern tip of Los Angeles. First stop: a Target in a nearby mall, where we bought materials for s'mores, including chocolate, graham crackers (Hi, Graham!), marshmallows, skewers, matches, and a whole flat of bottled water. It was hot out. Then down a bit to a Costco next to a Ford dealer in some mall-like area, for some additional snacks. This was also a chance to see where one of our aforementioned SoCal friends works. He works the Costco, not the Ford dealer.

At the beach, we joined some FOAFs, who had been surfing for the better part of the day. They had Trader Joes snacks, and a couple bundles of disturbingly dry wood, pre-packaged from a store somewhere.

But we'd forgotten dinner. An expedition was dispatched back to the mall (Sprawl?) to get hot dogs and condiments.

Time passed. It got dark, and colder. We had a fire, and food. I noted that most of the FOAFs had no concept of either thermodynamics, or of proper camp grilling, as they tended to stick just the tips of their wieners in the fire, then slip it between their buns, then complain that the bulk of the shaft was cold.

When we were evicted from the beach by a roving security guard with a loudspeaker, we returned to our hotel (in the strip mall thingy).

The next morning, Saturday, my wife and I were up and ready to explore early. An obvious first step was to walk across the strip mall/business park to Starbucks. Then we walked down the street about three blocks (3/4 of a mile) to a mall with a (different) Target, where we got sunscreen and floppy hats.

Then on to Whiting Ranch, a wilderness preserve that starts (and ends) abruptly at the mall. Walk away from a Starbucks, turn right, and suddenly you're in a hiking and mountain bike area of wild trees (many of them scorched), long grasses, lizards, and mountain lions. No, really. There are signs: "Avoid getting eaten; watch for really big cats who are sick of chasing rabbits! They look like this:" And then a picture of a fat happy mountain lion.

This is good adventure, and it consumed us for an hour or so.

We walked back, after looking in vain for mountain lions, and POW!, the dirt trail ended at a McDonalds on the edge of the mall. We stopped there, for Subway.

Sorry, McD, you taste like ass.

At this point, it was (and I'm being restrained) FUCKING HOT. We got some water ($3.50 a half-liter), and limped ourselves back to our hotel at the strip mall. My feet hurt.

The streets in the OC are quite something. They're anywhere from 3 to 6 lanes each way, often with two or three turn lanes. They're massive, high-throughput arteries that are larger than I-5. And this isn't just one or two streets; nearly every street is wide like this. The blocks are long, too, often a quarter mile in length. There are of course perfect sidewalks, and carefully manicured shrubs and palm trees, but these aren't walking streets. They're meant for hot greasy speed. Some of them have 55 mph speed limits. Most of them are traveled at greater speed. They're hugely efficient if you're in a car. But they're mostly unshaded, long, hot treks for the insane pedestrian.

One of our friends was finally awake (the other was, too, actually, but she was working), and so he came to pick us up. He suggested that we go to a big mall in Irvine, called The Spectrum. This sounded like a great idea. Well, actually, anything that involved a trip in an air-conditioned car sounded like a great idea. So off we went.

The Spectrum is a bit like the upscale Bridgeport Village mall, back in Oregon. But with a 21-theater cinema, a merry-go-round, a carousel, and lots and lots of breast implants and thongs.

We cruised the Apple Store, and got some bitchin' Ice Storm blended fruit drinks at Nordstrom's trying-to-be-trendy eBar. We chugged some more $3.50 water, and hit a coffee shop (not Starbucks) too. My feet hurt, and my iPhone was lying to me, telling me that it was 75 degrees out. That was bullshit; it was at least 110, maybe 140.

We stopped (still in the Spectrum) for lunch (that's second lunch) at California Pizza Kitchen, known by those in the OC as CPK. I drank a couple liters of ice water, hoping that I wouldn't puke or die of water poisoning.

Did I mention that it was hot? There's some sort of bad juju going on in SoCal. I think that it's a combination of the ubiquitous pavement, and the dry air, that conspires to rob you of the will to live when you stand or sit anywhere that lacks air conditioning. Or maybe the sun is hotter there. Or the water is dryer. Dunno. I had periodic shaman visions of dying camels swirling their tongues over dusty yellow teeth, while making pitiful bleating noises.

We made it back to the car, and cranked the AC. We went to a Bed, Bath, and Beyond at a nearby mall, where other friends (I've got lots) looked for a wedding gift.

Then back to the first friend's house, where we waited for his wife to get off work. She works at Trader Joes, in a mall near their house.

When the Trader Joes shift ended, we met back up again and went to Islands (a burger joint) in a nearby mall, where I enjoyed a burger (the "Kilauea") that was legendary. I mean truly epic "that might be the best burger that I've ever eaten" good. I should have taken a picture of the food. I took a picture of the mall at sunset, instead.

Then back to our hotel at the strip mall, where we crashed in the cool room.

Sunday morning, we performed the usual walk across the strip mall for coffee. Then walked (again) along the unfriendly arteries to that large mall with the Target and the McD's and the Subway. It was early, and Sunday, and the lot was practically empty. It was hot.

We bought a couple $5 shirts, and a couple more $3.50 waters.

While purchasing the shirts, I couldn't help but strike up a spirited conversation with the checker, a leathery redheaded woman with an underbite. Spying our backpack and floppy hats, she asked in a sickened voice, "You didn't walk here, did you?" She probably thought that we were homeless travelers who hadn't yet been properly picked up by the efficient Aesthetic Preservation thugs who I kept almost seeing out of the corner of my eye. The checker was about to hit a panic-button, but then she spied my Oregon drivers license, and started using smaller words, like you would for the stupid or the infirm. "Oh, you're from Ore-E-Gon", she explained. I took my shirt and got the fuck out of there before she reconsidered the alarm.

We walked back to the hotel. At the strip mall. It was hot.

Our friends picked us up for lunch. Yay air conditioning! We stopped at an In-N-Out Burger on the edge of a mall, where I had one of their secret menu items: Fries Animal Style. Then we drove to Laguna Beach, which is a suburb of LA.

Well, actually, we tried to drive to Laguna Beach. First the odd SoCal toll road system required that we pay $1.50 to make a U-turn. Then, when we were only about 10 miles from Laguna Beach, we hit stop and go traffic. Mostly stop. This was the start of the backup of cars leading in to downtown LB. We decided that discretion was the better part of valor, and that instead of watching cars for two hours, we'd go watch a movie. We went to the Spectrum, where we immediately bought more of those Ice Storm fruit drinks and $3.50 water, and then some $17 tickets to see "Up" in 3D. We got funky 3D glasses, in advance. Sweet. We played with those for an hour, while sitting in the shade drinking water and socializing with our iPhones.

The movie was air conditioned. And sad.

Afterwards, we went to CPK, which, if you recall, is located at the same Spectrum mall. Then we went back to the friend's apartment, which was air conditioned. Then back to our hotel at the strip mall.

Monday, we (yep, Starbucks) didn't go to the Target down the way at the mall. No, we had a breakfast engagement at the friend's father's bakery and deli, at a mall. The cinnamon rolls were so good that they were probably illegal. My wife and I shared one, to reduce potential jail time.

Then we drove to a nearby "lake", which consisted of a private club with a pool, lifeguard, paddle boats, jungle gym, carefully-placed sand, beach chairs, and implants, all inaccessible to us, connected to a publicly-accessible artificial lake with a running path, exercise stations at intervals, and that strange spongy grass that I've only ever seen in SoCal.

I saw a turtle.

On the far side of the lake, we found a little mall-like place, with a Starbucks, where we grabbed stimulants and reconstituted in front of their air conditioning.

Then back to the car, back to the apartment to wait for the other friend (the one who works at a Trader Joes at the mall), then to a tiny strip mall Subway for lunch.

We cruised around looking at houses for a while, and all too soon it was time for our plane back home.

Our flight to Portland was uneventful, and we arrived just as a great sunset was lighting up the sky. We were both hungry, and so I asked my wife, "wanna hit the mall for a Subway?" She giggled. We hit a Wendy's instead, and then drove home to Eugene.

So, here's the thing. There are plenty of things to do in LA that have nothing to do with malls. And, yes, I'm hamming it up a bit in the interests of making a point. But, it really is true that the size of the city, the heat, the layout of the streets, the crowds, all conspire to make OC a mall culture.

Getting out of the city takes a good hour of driving, except for Whiting Ranch, which is an aberration, to say the least. When you try to flee the city (as we discovered when trying to go to Laguna Beach) eleventy-billion other people are looking to do the same thing. Eventually you stop trying to claw your way out to a beach (or you arrive at a beach and find it packed bumper to bumper), and you turn back towards home. Or maybe you do stay at the beach, carve out your little piece of sand, and use mall goods to provide fire, food, and drink.

The heat is oppressive, worsened by the amount of concrete, the broadness of the streets, and the lack of covering plants. There are trees, very pretty palms, it's just that they are relegated to the side of the massive street-arteries, where they do jack shit to make the streets cool, or to make walking fun. In a car, you can zoom along the streets at refreshing speed, and no matter where you are, there's a familiar food or clothing or coffee chain in a mall within a couple minutes' drive.

The result is that you want to either be in your air conditioned home, or in your air conditioned car, or in some other air conditioned building. Like a mall. The last thing that you want to do is walk; the street will crisp you like bacon, and blister your toes, and wring moisture out of your pores and into your underwear.

On the flip side, no matter where you go in your car, the surroundings are familiar. There's always a Starbucks, a Subway, an Old Navy, a Target, a Costco. It's an odd feeling, that sense of sameness, that feeling that, despite traveling for 15 minutes at ludicrous speed, you're still in the same place where you started, with the same stores, the same concessions, the same resources. One mall blurs into another, one restaurant into the other, and what's left are the people, your friends, and what they bring to the table.

It's important to have good friends, and I count myself extraordinarily lucky.

UPDATE: Oh, I promised something funny about the Thai Garden Noodle and Grill.

Coexisting with the familiar national food chains like McDonalds, Starbucks, and Subway, there are a huge number of restaurants in SoCal that have shoehorned "Grill" into their name, presumably as a means of sounding both savory and healthy. In our brief time there, we cataloged the following:

Adobe Grill
Aloha Grill
Bob's Kabob House Bar & Grill
Cannons Seafood Grill
Chaparosa Grill
Chipotle Mexican Grill
Contodo Mexican Grill
Cuban Pete's Caribbean Grill
Daily Grill
El Pollo Loco Flame-Grilled Mexican Chicken
El Tapatio Grill
El Torito Grill
Fresca's Mexican Grill Restaurant
Gaucho Grill
Guacamole Grille
Harbor Grill
Hot Off The Grill
Jackson Barne Classic Grill
Mesa Grill & BBQ
Nalu's Island Grill
Oasis Grill
On the Border Mexican Grill & Cantina
Phil's California Bar and Grill
Pita Grill Mediterranean Cuisine
Romano's Macaroni Grill
Rubio's Fresh Mexican Grill
Rudy's Pub and Grill
Skimmer's Panini Grill
Spaghettini Grill and Jazz Club
Spark Woodfire Grill
Spasso's Italian Grill & Bar
Tangerine Grill
Thai Garden Noodle and Grill
the Veggie Grill
Tia Juana's Long Bar and Grill
Trimana Grill
Tuscany Mediterranee Grill
Yama Sushi & Grill
Yucatan Grill

...which tells you something about SoCal culture.

Note to reader: I use the term "mall" to refer to any collection of shops meant as a destination, whether entirely contained within a single building, or laid out in a sparse but symbiotic cluster, or as a large scale collection of individual shops in a single structured outdoor area. It's a bit of artistic license, but it makes the blog title (and thesis) work.

MJ Bishes Exit Stage Left

2009-07-01T08:16:00.002-07:00

I suppose that I was as crushed as anyone when I heard that Michael Jackson had died after standing up suddenly while searching for his nose and jar of skin pigmentation.

But true fandom won't be satisfied with the glut of media coverage, soaring album sales, drama about the will, and what to do with his children. Nope. The true fan must rush to join the MJ.

All I can say is, if someone is so twisted up that they'd rather die than exist knowing that MJ is flatlined, well, we ought to let them. It's a normal and necessary purging of the gene pool after such a pop tragedy. The dumbest ones ought to - nay need to - get the hell out of the gene pool, and take their Darwin-brand water wings with them.

UPDATE: It's getting weirder out there.

Sandwich Envy

2009-06-24T21:42:00.000-07:00

Apparently the Singapore franchisee of Burger King is feeling a little inadequate when faced with that recent Quiznos ad. They've unleashed this whopper:

While it's not as long as the Toasty Torpedo's foot of flavor, the Super Seven Incher is long and juicy and mind-blowing, and seems to be a winner in the girth department.

The only thing missing is some creamy mayo on the chin.

Heh.

Mudball

2009-06-24T17:23:00.000-07:00

About a month ago, I encountered a tale of woe, House Fire = No More Monster, in which a Ducati Monster Forum member recounted his misfortune with an electrical fire destroying his garage, his motorcycle, and a good portion of his home.

The fire also destroyed a slow-moving minivan, so that was a silver lining, at least.

This tale, and the accompanying pictures and newspaper article, generated a variety of sympathetic responses from readers, including "Glad you're okay", "Bummer", "Sorry to hear that", "Total fucking bummer on a Biblical scale", "Holy suck", and my favorite, a response to the newspaper write-up:

"It makes you sound like Chuck fucking Norris. New Ducati in the garage, exploding. You, leaping through the flames, pistol in hand."

The whole eight pages of the thread are funny, endearing, and worth a read. They're also proof that bikers are good folk. Or at least, Ducati bikers are. Go ahead, go read it. I'll wait.

Cool, huh?

But that's not what I came here to talk about.

No, see, one of the respondents in the House Fire thread has a great avatar. Calls himself MrIncredible, perhaps because his wife (and also DMF forum member) was originally MsIncredible. Or maybe his name came first, dunno. Anyhow, MrIncredible's signature for the forum (the bit that gets appended to the bottom of every one of his posts), has a line which reads:

"Buy my S4R! http://ducatimonsterforum.org/index.php?topic=16106.msg280606#msg280606

If it weren't for his avatar, and the House Fire thread, I'd not have noticed the signature at all. Once I did notice it, I was intrigued.

I followed the link, unaware that I was popping down a rabbit-hole from which there was little hope of return.

His bike was an S4R (middle, left), a successor to my Ducati Monster M1000 (top, left) with a slew of great design changes. It's a beautiful bike, but a style that has sadly been discontinued, replaced by the brand new 2009 Monster 696 and Monster 1100 (bottom, left). The new Monsters are a significant departure in style, and really don't grab me the way that the earlier designs do. The new ones to me are more like a kick in the nutsack, and less like a...um, well, less like a simile that's not a kick in the nutsack.

I'd idly considered buying an S4R, just to save for a rainy day, and as protection against not being able to find a Ducati in a few years that wasn't tarted up and dumbed down like the 696 or 1100. But S4Rs are pretty expensive, compared to the older and/or smaller bikes. Used they often list for $6k to $8k, sometimes more. Not an impulse buy.

Then this one, listed for $4500. Less than my M1000 had cost. Still not an impulse buy, but unarguably compelling.

I poked around a bit, reading the ad comments (it had been listed at $6500, and was a bargain at that price!), and navigating to the additional pictures that the ad referenced. Amongst the pictures, I discovered that MrI apparently has a special aversion to washing his daily commute vehicle, and that the S4R was therefore affectionately known as "Mudball". The sparkly clean pictures in the ad were an aberration, motivated no doubt by a clever realization that a grime-caked street motorcycle is a harder sell than a shiny one.

I also got a look at some of the pics of the damage that it sustained in the "lowside" crash (video example) that it had suffered, and of the subsequent repairs.

Taking detail pictures of repairs or alterations to a motorcycle is decidedly odd, and so I knew that MrI was a kindred spirit in at least two ways. However, most owners of Monsters would take any damage as an excuse to customize, and (aside from aftermarket handlebars and grips) this bike was entirely stock. A tabula rasa. Unusual.

All told it was a bargain, and, after talking about it, my wife and I decided that we ought to adopt Mudball.

I got in touch with MrI, who was delighted to finally be able to sell, and incredibly helpful and forthright and generous, besides. We arranged that a friend of mine would pick up the bike and drive it back from San Francisco, at the close of Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference.

I cunningly purchased certain aftermarket accessories, to conveniently arrive prior to the bike. Mysterious packages starting arriving via UPS.

Then I waited with nail-biting eagerness throughout the WWDC conference (new iPhones, yay!), and then through the remotely monitored (via iPhone and traffic webcams) 528-mile trip back through cold, fog, rain, and lightning.

The bike arrived safe and sound late on a Thursday night. The rider seemed a bit numb. I pried him off the bike with the promise of a cup of tea, and wheeled the bike into the garage.

I noted with a bit of sadness that MrI had published a farewell to his bike on the DMF forum, as well as some pictures heart-wrenchingly titled "last ride". There certainly was some attachment there, after 3 years and 30,000 miles.

The next day, I gave the bike a quick once over, and a test ride to the DMV for title and registration. (By the way, visiting the DMV on a Friday morning at 8:30 is a revelation. No lines, no wait, and cheerful counter help. Awesome.)

That weekend, I did a more thorough inspection. There were some minor issues, but nothing out of the ordinary for a motorcycle with 30k on it.

I took some "before" photos, and an audio recording of the stock exhaust system. Then I started in on the fixes. I performed a "reflectorectomy" and removed the passenger pegs in a few seconds. Adjusted the brake and clutch levers, tightened the starter and light controls on the handlebars, cleaned and lubed the chain, checked the brake pads and rotors, confirmed that the front sprocket was a 14-tooth version and wasn't shark-toothed, checked the air filter for cleanliness, replaced several missing fasteners (three radiator bolts were completely gone!), and adjusted the bar stops that prevent the controls from smacking into the gas tank.

Then I got jiggy with it. I hacked off the rear part of the frame (a "tailchop", also sometimes known as an "assendectomy"), losing the aesthetically challenged mudguard/beer tray. I installed a high-intensity integrated rear light, and ditched the stock rear turn signals. Then, in a few hours of focused swearing and contorting to reach the fasteners, plus two trips to Sears for tools, I removed the entire stock exhaust system, and replaced it with an aftermarket Ex Box. This ultimately required the efforts of three people to completely reattach, since my hands were too big to reach the last bolt. The result was a greatly improved aesthetic, and a new throaty sound besides.

The bike still has to go in to the shop for the scheduled 30k maintenance and tuneup, and there are still a couple things not quite right (the front tire is due for replacement, the throttle sticks closed sometimes, the stock mirrors have to go, the reserve fuel light doesn't work, and the suspension needs to be set for me), but I gotta say that I'm really happy with the new steed.

She looks a little different now, but she still responds to "Mudball", as I'm sure MrIncredible would be pleased to hear.

Whee! A Video Camera!

2009-06-19T18:30:00.000-07:00

We got our new iPhone 3GSes (iPhones 3GS?) today, via UPS delivery. After backing up, updating, wiping, jailbreaking, and SIM-unlocking my old phone, I hooked up the new one. Everything copied over automatically, the new phone was activated and the phone number transferred, the old phone and SIM were disabled and handed to the cat, and I was good to go. Easy-peasy, and no need to talk to a human, or to an AT&T employee for that matter.

One of the first things that I did was play with the new camera. It's a MASSIVE upgrade, far more than mere specs suggest.

The old camera was really poor, suitable for little more than "I was there" Polaroid proof. Poor resolution, no macro ability, and (on my previous 2G iPhone) no GPS geotagging. And of course no video.

The new camera is better resolution and has macro abilities to the degree that optical UPC code scanning is now easy. Pictures are geotagged, which is cool for sure, and feeds into the augmented reality and "hive mind" possibilities for social network applications. There's a tap-to-focus function that's amusing, too.

But the video capabilities are the killer. Like for the compass, the mere existence of video recording on the iPhone isn't the point. The ability to record bits of video on a phone is pretty common. And the video quality on the iPhone is good but not great. What makes it such a nifty feature is the execution of the video experience.

First time using the video function, I pressed record then stop, then easily selected the chunk of the video that I wanted to keep, and cropped away the unwanted bits. Then I chose "share", which asked whether I wanted to email the file, host it on mac.com, or put it on YouTube. I chose mac.com. I entered a name for the video, and it was automatically scaled, compressed, and uploaded while I continued to do other things like play with the compass. The iPhone asked if I wanted to let anyone know about the video (yes, please!), then automatically generated an email with the URL to the video. I added recipients to the email, clicked send, and that was that!

I'd published video to the web, completely without reading any instructions, and told people how to find it. It was as easy as falling off a log, and that's the big deal. Anyone can do it. Everyone will do it. Keep in mind that this is a video camera that I (and all those other iPhone 3GS users) will always have with me, and that the effort involved to publish to a permanent repository isn't much more than sending a text message (or MMS, when AT&T finally supports that).

When you think about the overall quality of the video clips that are generated (here's the uncompressed version), and the fact that anyone with an iPhone can trivially post a video and tell people about it, that's pretty exciting. It's going to be hugely popular.

Power users have been publishing video to the web for a while. This strikes me as the dawn of the casual (and I mean really casual) user doing the same.

Whee! A Compass!

2009-06-16T22:40:00.001-07:00

My wife and I were early adopters of the original iPhone. Waited in line for it the first day, all that. We also have an Apple TV, Apple laptops, and Apple desktops. My company writes software for...yep, Macs. We're fanbois. Er, I mean grrls.

So, we always look forward to Apple's Worldwide Developer's Conference, relishing the keynote address and the inevitable product and technology announcements. Sadly, I've never actually gone to WWDC. I usually just follow a reverse-chronology live blog of the keynote at work, to get a taste of the excitement.

This year, a major chunk of the product news was the widely-anticipated update of the iPhone. It came in two parts: software updates that benefit all iPhones, and hardware updates found only in the new iPhone 3G S.

On the software side, there are some overdue and welcome features like cut-and-paste, landscape mode, MMS (which AT&T doesn't yet support), device-wide searching, tethering (which AT&T doesn't yet support), a locating service for lost phones, peer-to-peer connectivity, and the ability to embed Google Maps in other applications.

On the hardware side, the new iPhone 3G S has a much faster processor, double the memory, support for new high-speed networking (which AT&T doesn't yet support), a much better camera, video capture, voice control and voice dialing, better battery life, and a digital compass.

AT&T blows goats. Apple's doing pretty much A-okay, though.

Compared to our first-generation iPhones, this is a sweet upgrade. My wife and I immediately pre-ordered the new phones, which should arrive this Friday. Awesome!

We mentioned our excitement to a friend, and ticked off some of the new features. He was unimpressed. "So, basically, what you're saying is that the new iPhone finally has the features that all the other phones today have, like MMS, and video capture, and tethering, and voice dialing, and [snicker] cut-and-paste. And a digital compass. Is that right? A digital compass, huh? Whee."

Well, um, yeah, that's right. It's got features that most phones already have, and...um...a digital compass. And, uh...I'm...er...fantastically excited about it. Yeah.

Okay, that does sound dumb, doesn't it? I must be drinking the Kool-Aid. What phone user really cares which direction he's facing? I mean, besides Boy Scouts fleeing from their gay founder?

But, that's missing a big point. Think about what happens when the phone knows which direction you're facing. Mix that in with the other features of the iPhone, add some clever software developers, and shake well.

What you've got is a computer that accurately knows its planetary location and compass orientation, as well as its local (tilt) orientation. A computer with a camera, video-display, fast network connection, and access to the Google database. And with pretty significant processing power, besides.

Google Maps tied in to GPS is useful and cool in its own right, never-mind the compass. It's easy to search for nearby businesses and amenities, get turn-by-turn travel directions, view current traffic conditions, see satellite imagery, terrain contours, train and bus routes and schedules.

And then there's Google Maps Street View, an audacious project that has paid off in the ability to preview a location like you were standing there. Via Street View, you can see store fronts, street signs, and sidewalk features of bajillions of miles of streets all across the globe. You can take a virtual tour, looking in all directions and "driving" (clicking) along the streets from point to point. Street View accounts for perspective, overlays street labels, and displays other non-photo map information properly co-registered. If you've never tried it, you should.

Now, think about slapping Street View into a handheld computer with all the features (including compass!) of the newest iPhone. Tie the compass and tilt into the Street View interface, and suddenly you'd have a view that changes depending upon which way the iPhone is facing. Hold the iPhone in front of you, and call up the view of a street across the globe. Turn to your left or right, and the Street View would shift accordingly. Look up, holding the iPhone above your face. Street View would show a corresponding "looking up" view.

The overall affect, shocking, would be that the iPhone is a window or portal into that remote location. Wherever you turned, it'd show what you'd see if you were there. For fun, add a (scaled) input from the GPS, so that a few feet of your displacement equals a few dozen or a few hundred feet of displacement in the remote view. By facing in a direction and walking, you'd see, through the iPhone portal, what you'd see if you were actually in that remote location, moving down that remote street at high speed. Presto, virtual reality. And for cheap, and just by leveraging data and tools that already exist, plus the iPhone compass. Woah.

There's no need to view a remote location via Street View, though. The iPhone knows where you are currently. Via the same trick of mapping compass and tilt information, the iPhone can also know where the camera is looking. By feeding data from the camera through to the screen, and overlaying that video with certain additional information, you've got an augmented reality portal, a heads-up display.

So what? How about navigation directions that float over the current scene, in the direction you're looking? How about bus routes and bus arrival countdowns hovering in mid-air, when you look at a bus stop through your portal? How about floating Wikipedia tags for public buildings, for well-know artwork in museums, for encyclopedias, for storefronts? Maybe augmented maps, whenever you view a printed map through your portal?

Tie the iPhone portal in with a social media site like Facebook, and take advantage of the public information that participants post, referenced to their phone GPS information. Look through your iPhone portal, and you could see floating social tags (marital status, favorite movies, 25 things?) for people walking past you on the street. Or public, geotagged photos, floating over the earth where they were taken.

Search for a friend, then look out through your portal at a crowd, and you could see a pillar of virtual light (or, if you prefer, a big blinking, rotating, polka-dot arrow) shining down on your friend's location, moving as they move.

Gaming? Need a virtual dog? How about an augmented reality first-person shooter, played alone with zombies, or collaboratively with other real iPhone participants, on real streets? Tap to fire, aim your camera at them to aim. Your health counts down as their shots chip away at you.

How about a navigation application for Borders, containing their store layout and inventory? Search for a book, hold up the iPhone portal, and look through it. The proper shelf would highlight itself for you. When you grabbed the book, you could have a quick look at the cover (or UPC code) though your iPhone portal, and watch reviews and competitive pricing pop up.

Augmented reality advertising, anyone? A plain ad in a magazine or on a billboard could be recognizeable to the iPhone, and display 3D content, video, or even games or special offers, if you looked at it through your iPhone portal. It'd need to be a printed page interesting enough to get people to portal it, but that shouldn't be too hard.

Too blue sky? Not on a puny iPhone? Check this out.

That compass? Very important.

Three Wolf Moon

2009-05-19T12:09:00.001-07:00

Today, I came across this cool T-shirt on Amazon, thanks to surfing digg over lunch. At 73% off list price, the shirt was hard to refuse.

But wait. Better check the reviews.

Here's the one voted most helpful (2,468 of 2,489 people found the review helpful):

"This item has wolves on it which makes it intrinsically sweet and worth 5 stars by itself, but once I tried it on, that's when the magic happened. After checking to ensure that the shirt would properly cover my girth, I walked from my trailer to Wal-mart with the shirt on and was immediately approached by women. The women knew from the wolves on my shirt that I, like a wolf, am a mysterious loner who knows how to 'howl at the moon' from time to time (if you catch my drift!). The women that approached me wanted to know if I would be their boyfriend and/or give them money for something they called mehth. I told them no, because they didn't have enough teeth, and frankly a man with a wolf-shirt shouldn't settle for the first thing that comes to him.

I arrived at Wal-mart, mounted my courtesy-scooter (walking is such a drag!) sitting side saddle so that my wolves would show. While I was browsing tube socks, I could hear aroused asthmatic breathing behind me. I turned around to see a slightly sweaty dream in sweatpants and flip-flops standing there. She told me she liked the wolves on my shirt. I told her I wanted to howl at her moon. She offered me a swig from her Mountain Dew, and I drove my scooter, with her shuffling along side, out the door and into the rest of our lives. Thank you wolf shirt.

Pros: Fits my girthy frame, has wolves on it, attracts women.
Cons: Only 3 wolves (could probably use a few more on the 'guns'), cannot see wolves when sitting with arms crossed, wolves would have been better if they glowed in the dark."

Wow. There are many (more than 160, at last count) other quality reviews. Some highlights:

"It's the only garment ever known to have survived a round house kick to the chest from Chuck Norris."

"As soon as I put this bad-boy on I noticed something different about myself. I had become stronger, more agile and had the ability to find a cell phone's IMEI number just by looking at it."

"When I finally received and wore this shirt, I grew 2 inches of chest hair. My biceps and triceps became instantly toned and my crotch area felt extremely tight."

"Once a year on April 29th (Dale Earnhardt's birthday) I wash this shirt. When I take it out of the dryer I always have a thank you note from the washing machine and dryer!"

"Is anyone else missing wolves from their shirt? Also, does K9 Advantix work better than Frontline? "

And my favorite:

"I used to be a wolf shirt guy, until I discovered bear shirts. Bear shirts are much more mystically powered and attract an even more powerful woman. Even a woman wearing a bear shirt can attract a more powerful woman. [...] These women can usually be described as in excess of 5-10, with a good quality weight that won't be pushed around in a West-Texas thunder storm, a generally attractive fe-mullet hair style, and powerful thighs, and are known for their ability to slam crush beer cans (a la Bert Jones) and spit non-menthol snuff at least 10 feet. These hot mamas have been known to spend their time driving repo trucks or working as lumber jills. [...] Bear shirts rule. I once saw a bear shirt eat a wolf shirt."

Also hidden in the reviews is a reply from The Mountain (designers and sellers of the shirt) refuting some of the claims.

But wait! Looking at the other aspects of the product listing on Amazon, I discovered more win!

Customers Who Viewed This Item Also Viewed: this, this, this (which has it's own set of great reviews and customer images) and (disturbingly) this.

Tags Customers Associate with This Product: wolf (27 people, not surprising), t-shirt (18, nice, someone is paying attention!), breasts (6, wha?), dungeons and dragons (3, double-wha?), and the best thing ever (1 person. Oddly this tag is a very small Amazon category, containing only 5 products, two of which are wolf shirts, and one of which is an Yngwie Malmsteen album).

I have to say, this product delivers!

UPDATE: The other wolf shirt in the category the best thing ever is this one, also by The Mountain. It has only one review, a glowing 5-stars:

"When I first saw this T-Shirt, I think I cried for at least an hour. It is possibly the most beautiful thing I have ever seen, and I've seen the sunrise at the Grand Canyon, so I know a thing or two about beautiful things. I bought myself three, and one for each of my family members' and friends' upcoming birthdays. All I can say is, I plan on wearing this shirt every day, alternating between the three and doing my laundry every week or so, so that I never have to wear another shirt ever again. I was referred to this shirt by an acquaintance, who told me how many women he picked up at Peep's, the local biker bar, with it. I can't wait to get mine!"

My Gay Encounter at Freddy's

2009-05-08T17:00:00.000-07:00

As most of you now know, Fred Meyer is a hotbed of bloggable activity. Sometimes the action occurs at the checkout. Sometimes it's all about a chance parking lot rendezvous.

Yesterday, on the way home from the gym, I stopped briefly at Freddy's for some boneless skinless chicken breasts. I parked where I always do, and walked towards the "food entrance" (as opposed to the "smelly fertilizer chemicals entrance", which is on the other side of the building).

Between me and the entrance I spied an imposing black off-road vehicle, a jeepy-thing like this (click for bigger pic):

Holy shit! The thing oozed testosterone. Snorkel, ram bumper, knobby tires, jacked suspension, winch, light covers, you name it, this had it. Not the roll-bar-mounted fire extinguisher, but everything else.

And it was pristine, glossy clean from snorkel to tires like only a cranked-up automotive detailer can clean. I angled closer for a look.

As I approached the driver-side door, a vicious, throaty, slobbery growl startled me out of my Zen-like reverie. I leapt backwards with an oath, smacking hard into the shopping cart corral and thereby handily preventing myself from falling over backwards onto my head. The sheer viciousness of the sound conjured deep and primal fears.

I gingerly approached the door a second time. Within, quivering with excitement on the front seat, was the last thing (both in stature and in color) that I expected to see:

I let out a giggle, and grabbed for my iPhone to snap a picture. The poodle dashed frantically for cover, disappearing under the back seat.

I resolved to return to snap the bitch after I bought my chicken boobs.

After breezing through the self-checkout, I returned to the parking lot. Unfortunately, I was too late. The owner of the black beast was loading groceries into it, and the opportunity for a poodle close-up was denied.

As I skirted the jeepy behemoth, I glanced at the owner. His eyes met mine. Whoah! Metrosexual! He looked a bit like a cross between Dane Cook, Alan Rickman, and some fugitive from a 1987 grooming ad, complete with Van Dyke-ish (Dyke-y?) beard, button-down shirt, tie, and sport coat. I quickly looked away, as my mental model expanded to explain the new information.

I really wanted to take a picture of the jeep/poodle/fugitive tableau, but stopping to talk to (or worse, pose) a metrosexual driving a tricked-out over-detailed jeep with a groomed, highly-caffeinated toy poodle, while I was wearing nothing but a T-shirt and shorts both soaked in sweat, my biceps bulging from the workout and from carrying a load of boobies, was just a bit too ambiguous for words.

I knew, however, that I had my next blog entry.

Patient Zero

2009-04-27T19:24:00.000-07:00

This last weekend, the whole "swine flu" thing hit the intartubes. It entered my awareness on Saturday, when I chanced across a CNN report on TV.

At first blush, the disease seemed kinda nasty in a distant way: about a thousand sick and a few dozen dead in Mexico City, and some isolated cases in the US. CDC and WHO were on the prowl, trying to characterize it, get a handle on mortality and morbidity rates, and learn how it jumped from pigs to humans.

I watched CNN for a while, then got bored with the repetition, and went to check on my BBQ pork.

On Sunday I glanced at the coverage online, then sent an email to my mom suggesting that she be careful when she went back to her job as a school counselor on Monday. Didn't want her getting sick!

This morning, I was checking email at work when one of our support team members poked her head in my door and asked if I had time to talk to her about the flu. She'd voiced some concerns to our CEO, and he'd suggested that she talk to me about appropriate corporate measures, since I had done some research for him a couple years ago about pandemics.

I had a cool set of role-playing documents for pandemic planning, but role-playing wasn't really what she was looking for.

So we sat down and reviewed the current information. 1600 or so possible cases in Mexico, 80 or so dead. 40 suspected cases in the US, no deaths. Lessee, 80 divided by 1600... that's about a 5% mortality rate. No biggie. We looked at a google maps tracker of suspected cases. These were clustered in Mexico City, California, and the East Coast, with some in Spain, New Zealand, Sydney. We remarked upon how this was clearly a consequence of travel. Mexico -> California, Mexico -> Spain were both obvious, and Sydney and New York are major travel hubs, so those made sense too, even without the school trip to Cancun.

We cruised the CDC and WHO web pages, and CNN. I noticed that CNN's Sanjay Gupta (whose name always reminds me of a fish) was on location in Mexico City, reporting from the disease epicenter. What a dumbass.

We discovered a WHO FAQ, which had good basic information, but one...um...oddity. One of the supposed "frequently asked questions", and I'm not making this up, was "What should I do if I am in regular contact with pigs?". WHO's answer was equally funny: "Most people are infected through prolonged, close contact with infected pigs." Given the mixed company, I decided not to make an off-color joke about this. If I had joked about it, though, my answer would have been, "wear a condom".

We talked about whether our support- and sales-team members should be quarantined at home for a couple days after travel, before coming to work. I thought this was premature and too reactionary as a blanket policy, at least for now.

We reviewed the normal precautions against the spread of any flu infection (stay away from those with a cough or fever, wash your hands, don't pick your nose, don't pick your friend's nose, cover your mouth with your arm when you cough or sneeze, don't shake hands, don't share keyboards, get plenty of sleep, eat well, stay active, stay home if you have flu symptoms) and the normal flu symptoms (fever, lethargy, lack of appetite, coughing, runny nose, sore throat, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea).

We commented upon the preliminary nature of the information about the disease, and the likelihood that it'd change rapidly.

We checked out the 1918 flu pandemic, and discovered that it had a mortality rate of about 2.5%. That surprised me; I had previously dismissed 5% as "low". Not so. The 1918 flu, with a lower rate, killed somewhere between 20 million and 100 million people. Huh.

Well, anyhow, this one had no fatalities in the US, and everyone knows that Mexico is a third world country with abysmal health care. Totally different situation.

I suggested that, for now, our corporate policy would be the following:

Remind everyone about proper hygiene to prevent flu transmission.
Remind everyone to stay home and seek medical attention if they contracted flu symptoms.
Suggest that employees evaluate travel with their manager, immediately prior to travel. Be willing to cancel travel if it seemed unsafe.
Monitor the global situation and re-evaluate corporate policy if and when significant new information arose.

Pretty happy with that, we adjourned, and I popped my head in the CEO's office to tell him what we'd decided. Thumbsup from him.

I went back to my normal work.

Less than an hour later, I heard a heated discussion about flu transmission, from an office down the hall. It was basically a rehash of what we'd discussed. I sighed and closed my door.

At lunch, I went to Market of Choice to grab a bite to eat, since I was rushed. I was about to select a package of sushi, when I stopped, and looked suspiciously at the sushi-gal behind the little kiosk. She'd definitely touched each of the bites I was intending to pop into my mouth. Her eyes seemed bright and clear, and she wasn't coughing or wiping her nose on her sleeve. She didn't appear to have diarrhea. I risked it, and grabbed a tuna and eel combo. They were out of Monster Lo-Carb, so I got a sugar-free Red Bull. Yech.

Back at the office, I went to the bathroom to pee. I washed my hands thoroughly, and dried them carefully, using the towel to turn off the water faucet, and to open the door. I was pleased with myself about that detail.

I ate lunch, and returned to work. I had a meeting at 1, which was uneventful. Then, at 2, our regulatory affairs consultant came by to get some paperwork from me for an FDA submission. She was coughing and sniffling, and looked miserable when she entered my office. I moved my chair a bit further away from her, and asked if she had a fever. She didn't, and I was about to relax, but she said "I think I just got a cold in Arizona". Uhh.....yeah. That's sorta near the Mexico border, innit? I told myself to shut the hell up, and we worked through the documents. But I was very careful not to pick my nose or hers, let me tell you. She left. I pushed the chair she had used into the corner, using my foot.

I went to get a coffee refill, and discovered an opened bag of gummi bears on the office kitchen table, free for the sampling. After deciding that a gummi bear was worth the risk of death by diarrhea, I ate a couple.

Back in my office, I hopped online to see how our collective obsession was coming.

My nose itched.

The numbers had grown, but there were still no US deaths. W00t! I read that the flu seemed to strike the healthy more than the weak. Weird. A quick poke around explained that. The flu wasn't killing people; their over-excited immune systems were doing the killing. This was a feature of the 1918 flu, too. Nice. On the bright side, the flu was responding to a couple anti-viral drugs (oseltamivir, aka Tamiflu, and zanamivir, aka Relenza... me knowing this is a benefit of having a pharmacist for a wife).

An hour or two later, I met briefly with our general manager to review a project that we were about to ship off to electrical safety testing in Canada. At the close of that discussion, he commented that the whole swine flu thing was aggravating, and consuming a bunch of his time. I nodded patiently. I pointed out that all of the US cases were recovering. Either that, or they'd died, the bodies been burned, and pod-people (transported from Groom Lake) been planted in their place to lull us into a false sense of security while the aliens got a firm foothold. We figured that this was probably unlikely.

Growing weary of the game, I excused myself and went back to my office. I had to close my door to avoid a discussion about the difference between avian and swine flu.

When I got home, my wife and I exchanged notes on the day. I told her my flu story, and we talked about it briefly. I flipped on CNN, in an act of reckless self-flagellation.

Gupta was reporting from Mexico City, where he'd snuck a small camera into a hospital by telling them that he is a doctor (which he is), and was taking video of lots of empty halls (which isn't a normal doctor function, and wasn't as exciting as he probably thought that it was).

Anderson Cooper was bouncing between Guppy and a guy from a virus planning institute (what?), who was getting his 15 minutes by saying that no one should be surprised by this event. Anderson paused every couple minutes to remind us that we could hop on to his web site (nope, not gonna link to it!) and participate in the live chat. Oh yay, news creating the news, tail wagging the dog. He also repeatedly stated that they were not fear- or rumor-mongering, unlike some other sources. I believed him.

This all held a sick fascination for me, sort of like checking out a car wreck as you drive by. I mean the newscast, not the underlying news.

CDC and WHO still didn't know where the disease first made the jump, and CNN suggested that it might be a Mexico hog farm with poor sanitation. This is silly, since digg had offered up pictorial proof of the real vector several hours earlier.

I went for a walk, then had some leftover pork.

Waitaminnit, This Is Mad Fun!

2009-04-10T17:04:00.000-07:00

Last weekend, a heat wave of legendary proportions hit Eugene, pushing the temperatures into the low 70s, and giving us several dazzling clear and sunny days.

As we approached the weekend and the forecast firmed up, my excitement mounted. It was motorcycle weather, and on the weekend, too!

I studiously refrained from mentioning anything about the weekend being moto-compatible to my wife, who (as we may recall from a previous post) earned her motorcycle endorsement, but only grudgingly so, and wasn't at all sure that motorcycles were anything more than a stress and a nuisance to her.

Saturday morning dawned, gorgeously sunny and bright, and a crisp 45 degrees. The sun promised to warm things up in due course. That morning, as we were getting started around the house, my wife asked, "So, whatcha wanna do today?"

With painful care I casually said, "I dunno...we could go drive circles in the parking lot on the Kawasaki." I raised my eyebrows and tilted my head to the side as I said this, to indicate that it was merely better than doing nothing.

To which she replied, "Okay." We left it at that, and went about our morning rituals.

A bit before lunch time, our friend (and not-coincidentally my wife's MSF course compatriot) came by. She and my wife went shopping.

I stayed behind in our garage and carport, where I wheeled out the relevant bikes. I amused myself by pointing to them and muttering, "Duc, Duc, Duc, Kaw!".

I considered briefly whether a bike could be parked inside the VW bus in the garage, thereby freeing enough space for a fifth bike, the inevitable fourth Ducati. I estimated whether removing the back seat of the V-dub would provide the necessary clearance. Too close to call, really.

Tiring of that, I inspected the bikes for tire wear, tire pressure, engine, fluids, controls, signals. I polished them, where they needed it. Mine needed it.

Come early afternoon, with the sun blazing an amazing 68 degrees, the women returned from shopping to find the bikes lined up in the carport, ready for a bit of fun. I was inside, feigning boredom.

Our friend had wisely tricked her husband (my cow-orker and friend) into staying at home and watching their 2-year-old play in the mud.

Gear was donned in a ritual that (like for SCUBA diving) is fidgety when you're first learning and doing it, and purely mechanistic and quick once you've really settled into the pattern. In SCUBA, you can tell the people who are nervous by the amount they readjust and recheck their gear. Same for motorcycling. These two were both a bit nervous, but also clearly ready to get reacquainted with riding after the winter down-time.

The day was perfect, the fairgrounds parking lot (visible from our bedroom window) entirely clear of cars.

I offered to take both bikes around the block, to the fairgrounds, for minimum stress on the part of the "students". They could start their practice from the safety of an empty parking lot, instead of trying to get out of the driveway and immediately into traffic. This can be tricky, as our corner is confusing and has poor visibility. Also, this was the chance for me to to ride the S4R for the first time, not something to be missed! They both nervously agreed.

I ferried the Kaw over first, and walked back. Then the S4R, which is a beautiful bike, the successor to mine but with notable power upgrades. It purred, and, when I cranked the throttle vigorously on the straight stretch into the parking lot, growled and leap forward like a savage beast surprised by a stealthy proctologist. I spooged myself a little, just then.

Anyhow, both bikes and both biker babes were thus transported to the parking lot. As we made final preparations for the parking lot session, two gawkers boldly approached us, and eyed the bikes up and down before I chased them off.

All was ready.

My hopes that my wife would walk the bike around a bit, getting reacquainted with the throttle, brakes, and controls, and ease into further familiarity with time, were almost immediately dashed. She took a couple straddling steps, then popped her legs onto the pegs, cranked the throttle, and shot off into a smooth loop through the far end of the parking lot. Apparently muscle memory was alive and well!

They both did a couple of lot loops, smoothly and without significant issue. On the next pass, I flagged down my wife, and suggested that she "ride over to the other fairgrounds lot and see if there's available parking". The Kaw and Duc both departed on this mission, vanishing behind the main fairgrounds building. They reappeared and disappeared periodically for a while.

I sat down under a tree and checked my email. Then I played with Google Maps a bit.

View Fairgrounds -> "Big Block" in a larger map

She returned, reporting that the other lot was empty. I said, "Okay, next challenge, then: go to the lot exit, merge with the traffic on 13th, drive down (the block or so) to this lot entrance, and come back to me." "Okay, I can do that!" And she was off.

At that exact moment, I saw the Duc, on 13th Street, doing the same thing. It reentered the parking lot, and zipped off behind the fairgrounds building again.

I watched my wife stop at the fairgrounds exit, signal, look, accelerate, merge, stop at the stoplight, signal, and turn back in to the fairgrounds lot. She took the long sweeping entrance at a good clip, turned in to the parking area, and stopped in front of me.

"How was that?" "Fine." "Okay, ready for a bigger challenge?" "Um, I guess so." "Go out like you did before, but turn left on Washington. Go up to 11th, turn left on 11th, then back on Jefferson, and reenter the fairgrounds. It's basically just going around two blocks." "Uh...okay." And off she went.

A brief interval while I watched the considerable traffic, and she was back. I think that our friend dropped by again on the Duc at that point, and I told her what my wife was up to. But I'm not sure, as the two of them were zipping past, circling around, disappearing and reappearing like a couple of excited hornets.

"Next challenge. Same as before, except that, when you get to 11th, go down 11th to Chambers, turn left there, go to 13th, and come back here. Bigger block." "[deep breath] Okay." And away she went.

View Fairgrounds -> "Big Block" in a larger map

For some time they were both MIA. Things got awfully quiet. I considered whether complications had arisen. I checked my phone. No contact, nothing happening. Traffic was heavy on 13th. I kicked at the dirt a bit.

Text message from the cow-orker, "Tom, are you near your phone?" Oh shit oh shit, I'm thinking. "Yep", I replied. "Your wife just showed up, and left." "At your house?! ROFL."

Holy shit! She'd gone feral! They live a few blocks off 11th, on the way to Chambers. Clearly she'd departed from the narrowly planned route, and stopped by to show off. That's my girl!

Couple minutes, and there was my wife again, making the turn into the fairgrounds parking lot. When she showed up, she looked like this:

Which is to say, smug. The S4R appeared shortly thereafter, with an equally smug rider.

They were both bubbling over with excitement, my wife telling us animatedly where she'd gone, and that she stopped at their house, and that she completed the full loop, and how the traffic was, and and and....

"Okay, you guys ready for the next step?" They eyed me suspiciously. "What?" "I'll go get my bike, and all three of us will go out 11th to Bailey Hill, Bailey Hill to Lorane, Lorane to Chambers, Chambers to 13th, back here. A chance to get off the main streets, and in some gentle curves."

They considered this briefly. "Woah. Okay!"

I needed another helmet, and hubby-cow-orker-with-the-muddy-kid needed his car, so I left the women at the fairgrounds and took the car over to the cow-orker's, grabbed his spare helmet, got a ride back to my place. Retrieved my gear and bike.

The women drove up on their motorcycles. (Dang, that's a fine sentence to write, and fun to actually see!)

In a slow and careful caravan, we went along 11th, through lights and heavy traffic, to Bailey Hill. There was gobs of traffic along Bailey, too, and we pulled over a couple times to let buildup pass, or for me to inquire how they were doing. We made it up to about 55, briefly, but generally took things very sedately. We saw lots of bikes, going both directions. After the turn onto Lorane, traffic thinned a little bit. The curves on Lorane were a new experience for them, and so I went through those at a stoned snail's pace, but still managed to pull ahead. I waited on the straights. Then Chambers, and 13th, and home.

View Larger Map

The trip was a resounding success. The chatter afterwards was even more ebullient than before. "Hah, I made it up to 55!" "I saw you take off like a rocket, you speed demon!" "Those curves were scary!" "No way, the really scary part was coming down the steep part of Chambers." "Oh, yeah, that sucked, I thought I was going to fall off!" And so on.

It was awesome. She gets it now, that part about motorcycles that no one can ever explain to you, that only comes from piloting one. I ordered her Aerostich suit today. We'll be shopping for a helmet and gloves this weekend, I'm sure.

A Swift Solution to Homelessness

2009-03-30T22:04:00.001-07:00

It is disheartening to see the number of melancholy homeless people begging on street corners. Nearly every major artery with a stoplight has at least one resident beggar, unkempt and in tattered clothes, usually holding a sign saying "Anything Helps" or "God Bless", or both. Sometimes they work in shifts, trading off on choice corners.

I have watched the homeless for years, remarking upon the unusual social interactions that they engender. It is indeed a strange feeling to pull up to a stoplight populated by these walking wounded. Do you stare at their misery? Do you pretend not to see them? Do you look at them briefly, to show that you are unafraid, then rummage in your car console for a breath mint until the light thankfully changes? When you are third or fourth in line, are you happy that you did not have to stop next to the beggar? If a car or lamp post blocks your view, are you relieved to not see their sunken eyes? Does their unilateral "God Bless" enter you into an implied social contract from which there is no good escape? Do you give them money to assuage your guilt?

As our country has entered more deeply into this recession, a new influx of beggars has strained the ranks of the old-school homeless. On some corners one now finds the only-recently dispossessed, workers just laid off and turning to the public for alms. Their cardboard signs are a tragic mix of new and old: "Laid Off From EWEB Anything Helps". For now, they wear new sneakers and clean clothes, and are well-groomed.

What should we do, to help stem this tide? What approach or method will end this spread of misery, and help get both the old-school homeless and the nouveau pauvre beggars off our streets and back where they belong, contributing to the good of society? It is heartbreaking to see people homeless and hungry, scrabbling for a living when they were so recently comfortably ensconced in large homes, watching the Super Bowl on an HDTV bought on layaway, nibbling nutritionally bankrupt junk foods.

I therefore offer my own humble suggestion.

I have been assured by a very knowing Dubliner of my acquaintance that an otherwise healthy homeless beggar, properly bathed and peeled, is a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; I have no doubt that they will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout.

I do therefore humbly offer it to public consideration that our beggars, homeless or not, properly rounded up and cleaned, be offered in sale to those of more stable financial means. Even a scrawny and aging beggar, like the wizened regular who works 7th and Washington on weekday mornings, will serve as at least two dishes at an entertainment for friends. When a family dines alone, a fore or hind quarter will make a reasonable meal, and seasoned with a little pepper or salt will be very good boiled for stew, especially in winter.

Admittedly this food will be initially quite common, increasing in rarity as time goes on and as the public's tastes change. Indeed, it may be thought of somewhat like lobster, which was once the province of the working class, and which has since become a rare and expensive delicacy as supply has declined. However, free market pressures will naturally serve to establish a proper balance between supply and demand, ensuring that a few remaining beggars are always available to the more adventuresome gourmet.

This food will be in season throughout the year, but be more plentiful in the summer months when the homeless are easiest to find out in the open in parks and public streets, and when the ambient temperature encourages clothing that allows the prospective harvester to more readily judge their gastronomic and sale value.

The cost of raising these beggars is conveniently already borne by the element of our society that is most gullible, guilty, and God-fearing; no additional support should be necessary to bring crop after crop of beggars to a harvestable state, except to allow soccer moms to continue to drive our city streets.

The advantages of my proposal are obvious and many.

First, it will greatly lessen the incidence of "God Bless" signs shoved under our noses at stoplights, and the unilateral and coercive implied social contract that such signs entail.

Second, numerous new jobs will be directly created in the cleaning, processing, and packaging of the new food source. This will be a growth industry for years, until the supply of beggars fully stabilizes at a new carrying capacity.

Third, the profits from this new industry will be fed back into the community, creating new wealth and prosperity as the beggar resource is monetized. The money will circulate locally, the goods being entirely of our own growth and manufacture.

Fourth, the food will spawn a renaissance of fine dining as new recipes are explored and shared. The Food Network, already ridiculously popular, will almost certainly find new fodder in haute cuisine for the beggar.

Fifth, regional competition for excellence and exposure will doubtless result in the crowning of a Beggar Capital (akin to Gilroy, California, the self-proclaimed Garlic Capital). My town has a great head start towards seizing this title.

Other advantages can readily be enumerated, were it not for the interests of brevity.

I can think of no objection that will possibly be raised against this proposal, except that the total population will be greatly reduced by consumption. This is certainly true, and was indeed one of my principle designs in offering up this proposal.

Therefore let no one speak to me of other expedients: of living within our means, of offering up public works projects for honest pay and wholesome food and a place to live, of introducing to our culture a vein of parsimony, prudence and temperance, of learning to love our country and our land and build it up for our children, of being cautious not to sell our liberty for nothing, of teaching that sloth is punished and honest work rewarded, of putting a spirit of honesty, industry, and ownership into our populace, of rewarding excellence, of looking to our own affairs before we try to fix those of other peoples and other nations.

As for myself, having become weary with offering vain, idle, visionary thoughts, and at length utterly despairing of success, I fortunately fell upon this proposal, which, though wholly new, is both solid and real, of no expense and little trouble.

I am not so fixated upon my own opinion that I would reject an alternative found to be equally innocent, cheap, easy, and effectual. But please consider two points, before offering such an alternative. First, as things now stand, how will we be able to find food, clothing, and shelter for both the old-school homeless and the burgeoning nouveau pauvre? And secondly, ask the beggars themselves whether they would not think it a great happiness to have been sold for food, and thereby avoided such a perpetual scene of misfortune as they currently suffer, the impossibility of paying rent without money or job, the want of basic sustenance and Starbucks, with neither house nor proper clothes to cover them from inclement weather, with no prospect of relief or end.

DISCLAIMER: I have no personal interest in promoting this necessary work, having no other motive than the public good of my country by advancing our economy, providing for beggars, and giving some pleasure to the rich. I myself do not beg, my wife and I both being schooled through our own determination, having jobs based upon our own merit and hard work, and living wholly within our means.

Homoerotic Sandwich

2009-03-27T16:58:00.001-07:00

I just came across this Quiznos ad, which has now earned a place next to the Comcast Rabbit on my iPhone. Hilarious, bold, guaranteed to offend someone:

Wowzers. You gotta watch it a couple times, for the dialog to really "sink in", so to speak.

UPDATE 3/28/09: I saw the Quiznos ad again on TV last night. They were playing it a lot, maybe every half hour or so. Then, I saw it again this morning, but it was a new version. The new version is considerably toned down. Now the oven is asking to be rubbed with a chamois cloth (as opposed to being penetrated by a toasty man-torpedo). No more "put it in me" dialog. And, the exchange the end has been changed to "say it with passion" instead of "say it sexy". I guess that some executives noticed what they were selling, and freaked out, and insisted upon a retreat to the sort of prudishness that the Bible Belt requires. As of right now, the old version that I linked above is still available on YouTube, but I wonder just how scared those execs are. Might they try to get YouTube to pull the original risque version via a DMCA takedown notice? We'll see.

By the way, YouTube tends to make it difficult for one to download videos to iPhone (or your Desktop). YouTube videos are Flash format, and are stored in a temporary file while being streamed. Adobe's Flash player doesn't allow saves, and the temp file is deleted as soon as the streaming is done.

But that's security through obscurity; ve haf vays! Here's how to gain control of that stream:

Method 1 (Mac only, and the power-user method with the most control): Grab and transcode the stream cache.

While viewing the file on YouTube, choose Go->Go to Folder from the Finder menu, and enter "/var/folders" without the quotes. Press "Go". You'll get a list of oddly named folders. In the upper right corner of that view, in the search box, enter "Temporary", and make sure that you're searching "folders", not "This Mac". You should find a folder named "TemporaryItems". Open it.

Inside TemporaryItems, you'll see a file named "FlashTmp0". Copy it to your Desktop, so that when it is deleted from the TemporaryItems folder later, you'll still have a copy. Rename the file to "FlashTmp0.flv", which is the file ending for Flash video.

This file is now playable in VLC, a free video player.

To transcode the flv file to something suitable for the iPhone or AppleTV, use VisualHub or the transcoding tool of your choice.

Method 2 (Mac or PC, and ridiculously easy): Have Zamzar do it.

Go to Zamzar, and enter the URL of the YouTube video. If you're after the higher-def versions, make sure to put "&fmt=18" or "&fmt=22" at the end, as previously noted. Choose the output format (I prefer mp4), enter your email address, and click Convert. Wait for an email with a download link. Download your transcoded file. You're done!

Zamzar is free, and useful for transcoding a vast variety of image, document, audio, video, and compression formats. Just look at that popup list.

Internet Forum Puts A Smile On My Face

2009-03-23T10:27:00.000-07:00

In the 1970s and 80s, when consumer computer networking was still rare, there existed the BBS, or "bulletin board system". This was little more than a computer that allowed remote connection via dial-up, and software that created a simple file and comment space accessible to multiple users. This shared space was often used as a forum for like-minded geeks. Depending upon the whims of the BBS admin, that forum might be aimed at discussing Star Wars, or phone phreaking, or chess, or all three. Because of the need for phone calls to connect, most BBSes were local affairs simply because of the cost of participating long distance. (Incidentally, this was a big driver for the growth of phreaking, too. Free BBS access.)

At the time, having this sort of remote interaction without ever hearing or seeing the other participants was considered Extremely Odd™ by all but the geeks themselves. The geeks however, being antisocial (and themselves Extremely Odd™), saw this virtual space as a wonderful invention on the road towards never having to talk to real people. In this they were true visionaries.

In the late eighties and early nineties, my college years, the internet was almost solely the domain of academics. At the time, there was no world wide web as we know it, no browsers, no interface other than BBS-like text. There was email. There were smileys. There were purity tests ( I just scored a 9.2, and was able to answer yes to question #27, yay me!). There was chat. There were FAQs and flamewars. In the beginning was the command line. A whole string of students discovered and embraced this thin internet, in those few short years inadvertently and forever changing the civilized world. Bushmen continued to not care about email, however.

Instead of the BBS, Usenet became king. Vast and varied newsgroups existed, and new groups were created daily. Suddenly, someone with internet access (meaning a student or academic) could connect to a shared space targeted at any conceivable subject at all, and frequented by people all around the world. For free. (Meaning that the college footed the bill.)

Looking for a discussion about jokes? rec.humor. Want to talk about firearms? rec.guns. Feeling lonely during the holidays? alt.suicide.holiday. Looking for a place where people post pictures of roadkill, and tell stories about Montezuma's revenge, or throwing up when French kissing? alt.tasteless. Or, in some cases, rec.pets.cats.

It was the wild west for cognoscenti, and it was heady stuff.

One of my favorite newsgroups in college was rec.motorcycles. I had a Honda VF500F then, and the rec.moto newgroup was a great place to hang out at two in the morning, when I'd been playing NetHack since dinner and wasn't quite ready to go to sleep. In rec.moto, there was an amazing collection of knowledge, wielded by a group of willing participants who connected and interacted and responded when and as they wished. Topics ranged from the silly to the truly helpful, and the group largely policed themselves. Reputations were made on the basis of helpfulness, humor, expertise. There was a secret club, too (check out member number 0911 in the membership roster).

Usenet existed for a very long time, and is only just now truly dying. This decline is partly because of the influx of trolls, spammers, pedos, and other unsavories. It's partly because of ignorance. It's partly because of the cost of carrying all those newsgroups at an ISP, especially when so many groups are bloated with porn, warez, and other binaries. But it's also partly due to the emergence of the third generation BBS, the web forum.

The web forums aren't so different from the original BBSes, nor from Usenet newsgroups, in content or purpose. They're still available for nearly any topic under the sun, and still are largely self-policing. They still assemble a voluntary and erratic collection of experts, novices, and trolls. But each one is hosted at a particular single location, instead of being echoed to dozens and dozens of Usenet carriers. Anyone who can access the web can access these forums, without having to rely upon a beneficent Usenet carrier, or the permission of a misguided politician who thinks that internet porn moves through pneumatic tubes.

Today, the only web forum that I frequent is the Ducati Monster Forum, or DMF. It's got a lot of the old goodness of rec.moto, and is, again, a good way to kill time when I'm supposed to be doing chores. A number of the people there are still thankfully Extremely Odd™. Good technical resource, good camaraderie.

A couple weeks ago, someone on the DMF posted a link to a graphical designer's concept for a Lego helmet. The ensuing discussion was very positive, and an immediate call was made for "let's make 'em!"

Some graphic design types on the DMF kicked in their time, artwork was circulated and commented upon, and vendors solicited. Materials were discussed and chosen, and participants counted. An order was placed, and a prototype displayed. Money was sent via Paypal, and vinyl coverings mailed out via the (glacially slow, as it turns out) USPS Media Mail. Much anticipation and nail-biting ensued.

Finally my mailer arrived, containing a vinyl thingy and a surprisingly well-written set of installation instructions. But, I lacked a sacrifice visor!

On Amazon.com, I found a clear replacement visor for $22... but with $8 shipping and handling, not to mention a completely unnecessary delay in gratification. Screw dat.

I went to one local bike shop on Wednesday. They were entirely uninterested in selling me a visor, or anything else. Also, their web site makes my eyes bleed, and has almost no useful content. I left. Thursday I went to another shop, the place where I got my excellent Scarab winter gloves, and conveniently located on the way to the gym. Their web site is much better, and has actual useful information. I got there (the shop, not the web site) 2 minutes before they closed. Asked about a visor for my helmet. The guy knew the part number from memory, and reckoned that he had one. A bit of climbing over the bikes to the helmet section, and he returned triumphant. One clear visor. $24. Sweet.

Saturday morning, when I had enough time and focus to dedicate to it, I washed and dried the new visor, and started in on the vinyl application. Oh my god it sucked. But I was patient. Then I was frustrated. And patient again. Arrrgh! Whew. Done.

It looked way cool. I took a selfie to post to the DMF, and reported back to the forum on my experience, specifically pointing to a design limitation that made the vinyl application especially difficult.

That comment and others got picked up, and rolled in to the next order. Ain't distributed teamwork cool?

The whole process put a smile on my face. It reminded me that, while the medium may have changed, the underlying essence of Usenet from 20 years ago is still very much alive.

Pacific Lutheran University (and Tanya) Encounter Unexpected Resistance

2009-03-13T17:16:00.001-07:00

There's this great new ad for Comcast that features a genetically engineered rabbit, crossed with a panther, with turbines attached, on ice, shaved, etc. It always gets a laugh from me. I finally downloaded the movie (the full version) today, and put it on my iPhone, so I can titter at will.

Comcast also frequently runs ads featuring the Slowskys, turtles who are overwhelmed by the "fast speed of Comcast internet", and who prefer the "slow speed of DSL". A clever salvo in the ongoing DSL versus cable competition, which Comcast wins because...they control the local TV adspace.

We've had DSL for years, and have found it to be amazingly reliable, fast enough for multiple simultaneous online games at once, plus Skype multi-conferencing at the same time. In fact, DSL is really the only reason that we still have a "landline", a phone attached to our house. My wife and I both have iPhones, and so the home phone is a bit of an anachronism, perpetuated by our reluctance to leave the really extraordinarily good DSL service that we currently enjoy.

Still, occasionally people call the home phone. It's attached to an answering machine, though, and we'll normally only pick up if we recognize the caller ID number, and aren't otherwise occupied. So, most calls to the home go straight to the machine, and we listen to those messages... um... from time to time... out of habit.

Occasionally, we get calls that are listed merely as a phone number, or "Out Of Area", or otherwise with no name attached. These pseudo-anonymous calls are almost never fruitful, being telemarketers, people with syphilis, or both. Usually they don't leave a message, and usually they don't call back.

Usually.

One particularly persistent "number-only" caller has been ringing our phone in the early evenings, for, oh, must be about a month now. Never a message, but they weren't getting the hint, either. We wouldn't answer, but we'd at least go look at the number. The "made you look" joke gets annoying after a while.

Tuesday, I'd finally had enough. As I was about to leave the house to go to the gym, the landline rang, and I recognized the number as our frequent phantom caller. Full of aimless wrath, I picked up the phone, and politely said, "hello?"

The following dialog ensued:

"Hello, may I please speak with [my wife's professional title and name]?"
"Can I ask who's calling?"
"This is Tanya from Pacific Lutheran University, her alma mater."
"Ah, no thank you. She already contributes financially to PLU when and as she desires. Please put this number on your Do Not Call list".

Then Tanya made an error in judgement:

"I'm sorry, but protocol requires that I hear that directly from her."

Wait, what? The sheer absurdity of this statement caused me to pause in shock, as I gathered my indignation like a big spiky club wrapped in exposed high-voltage wiring, wielded by an over-caffeinated mixed-martial arts champion....

"Listen...what was your name again?"
"Tanya."
"Tanya, if anyone from PLU ever calls here again, I'm going to make it my personal hobby to make sure that everyone at PLU that I can contact - Dean, faculty, PR department, whoever - hates you for a very long time. Put us on your Do Not Call list! This is not a request."

At which point she wisely said:

"Ok, thank you."

...and hung up.

Now, Tanya was out of her element, and a little late in realizing it. I was harsh with her, both because it felt natural and good and wholesome, and to push through bureacratic bullshit that wasn't strictly of her making.

But Pacific Lutheran University has got some nerve telling their funding drive student callers that they should call and call and call until they get an answer, ignore answering machines, never leave messages, and refuse to honor DNC requests unless the alumnus or alumna tells them so in person. An educational institution like Pacific Lutheran University that does this is inevitably going to run across someone like...me. And I'm going to blog about what a bunch of goatfuckers they are. And you just know that at least three people are going to read it.

So, anyhow...

Dumb goatfuckers.

UPDATE: Tanya hasn't called back yet.

UPDATE 2: Here's how you identify goat sex if you're in the process of calling alumni to beg for funds, or to alienate them, or both.

UPDATE 3: No, I will not link to that infamous site that sounds like "goat sex", that has the image that you will forever henceforth wish you had not seen. This is a family show about Pacific Lutheran University, for Christ's sake!

The iPhone Diet

2009-02-28T09:28:00.000-08:00

Our cultural obesity problem is getting more and more obvious every day. Everywhere I look, there are rolls of fat peeking over the top of pants (or, in some cases, "leering" or "glaring").

"Dieting" as a concept and as a product is big big business. There's always a new fad diet, which promises to be easier to follow, better for you, cheaper, faster in the results department, or somehow better.

To varying degrees, they're all bullshit. At the core of the issue is very simple math. Addition and subtraction, really. Calories in, and calories out, and for how long, determines the amount of fat you'll earn. That's it. If you consume more energy than you need, your body will store it. Period. Doesn't matter whether it's eaten as lard, sugar, red meat, French fries, grapefruit, or broccoli. If you want to reduce the amount of fat that you carry around, you need to eat less, or exercise more. For fastest (and healthiest) results, you could do both.

Different diets certainly offer a variety of ways to do that essential math. And the way that they alter the energy balance does affect the ease of following the diet, how healthy it is for you, how expensive it is, and how big the daily caloric deficit is (hence how quickly you'll lose fat). Eating less calorie-dense foods clearly makes it easier to limit total calories. Rice and beans and veggies and skinless chicken breasts are your friends, for sure. But underneath, the math is always the same. Calories in, calories out. Claiming otherwise is asshattery.

In that light, and knowing that a pound of fat equals about 3,500 calories, it's easy enough to see what ought to be done. Want to remove 20 pounds of fat? Burn 70,000 calories more than you would at stasis. Doing it by nothing more than cutting out two bottles of Budweiser a night? It'll take you 8 months. Similarly, eat a completely unneeded Whopper with cheese, large fries, and a medium soda once a week for a year, and you'll pack on around 25 pounds of fat. Do it for a decade, and you'll be 250 pounds heavier than when you started, and quite possibly dead, too, "pre-embalmed" with a waxy buildup of preservatives and saturated fats in your circulatory system.

Soooo....

As previously indicated, I'm focusing upon what I eat, and how I exercise, to make my body the way that I want it to be. This isn't the first time; I've struggled mightily and with varying degrees of success with my weight for a couple decades now. I like those "calories in" a lot, and often shirk the less entertaining "calories out". I'm bad at math.

My best and earliest success was with the Body For Life program and competition. The BFL competition itself was motivating (though I did not win a Lamborghini, sadly), and the techniques espoused by Bill Phillips (the originator of BFL, former CEO of EAS, and all-around Guy With A Shady Past™) seemed to work pretty well for me. Eventually I fell off the horse, got back on, fell off again...well, you get the idea.

Body For Life appeals to me because of the way that it alters the calorie balance towards fat loss. Core attributes of the program include a number of things that just make sense to me at a basic level, from health, science, and sanity perspectives:

A number of smaller meals throughout the day.
Balanced meals with respect to protein, carbohydrate, and fat, and consisting of whole foods instead of highly processed foods.
Both cardio and weightlifting, and both in high-intensity versions.
Active and focused muscle-building, and nutrients to facilitate that.
Setting and measuring of specific goals, including before and after measurements and photos.
Public accountability, meaning that you announce your effort, and are thereby encouraged by those who know about it.
A scheduled day off each week, during which there is no required exercise, and no restriction upon food type or quantity, at all.

That last one is an essential sanity-maintainer, for me. Knowing that I only have to make it a couple more days, and I can eat that forbidden food, is often all that keeps me from a binge. The day off is a weekly decompression, a chance to restart a slowing metabolism, and a surprisingly self-limiting indulgence. After a week of eating well, a day of pizza and beer and candy leaves you feeling poisoned, despite how appealing it seems beforehand.

The goal, overall, is to find something sustainable long-term. So far this has proved elusive for me, in spite of the day off mechanism. Losing weight for me is relatively easy, once I get in the right mode. But I tend to slip out of that mode, and return to an unwanted and unhealthy set point, and 7 days off a week.

Currently, I've been properly focused for 3 and a half weeks, and (as is usual) have made some great and visible improvements to myself.

Something new this time, for me, is tracking what I eat and how I exercise via my iPhone. This addresses two of the problems that I've had before, with the otherwise good BFL approach.

Previously, I'd write down everything that I ate in a paper journal. This helped me estimate calories as well as PCF (protein, carbohydrate, and fat content). But the process was generally a hassle; it was hard to go get the journal every time that I ate something. It felt like penance, and was ultimately more effort than help. Keeping a diary of what I ate was really important to my success, but I hated doing it.

Nowadays, I almost always carry around my iPhone (which, it turns out, can be used to make phone calls, in addition to all the other great functions! Who knew?)

Anyhow, having a program on the iPhone that allowed me to track food intake seemed like a promising idea. I decided to give "Lose It!" a try. You enter your current weight, and your target weight, and how quickly you intend to lose weight (which maxes out at 2 pounds per week, not a bad goal at all, unless you manually set it to be more aggressive because you're insane).

The program calculates your approximate caloric maintenance, and the daily caloric goal for your intended weekly deficit. It does the math!

You enter what you eat on a daily basis, and it keeps a running total of calories and of nutrients, for the day and the week. There's a big included database of generic and branded items, and you can enter custom foods, too. You can also choose to repeat previous entries, or make custom recipes.

Then you enter daily calorie burn from exercises, and it accounts for those on the calories out side. Again, there are presets and the ability to customize.

And so you can see, at a glance, where you are with respect to your desired balance point for the day and for the week. It's pretty darn cool, and lots more convenient than a paper journal. Entries are fast, nutritional info is right there, and the feedback (especially the week view of bar graphs) is great.

With this sort of detailed tracking, it's easy to say, "I'm doing well on calories, but haven't had all that much protein today. I should probably have a protein snack instead of a bagel". Seeing the daily goal line, and where you are in relation to it, is really helpful.

The actual eating less, and eating right, is still a challenge to one's force of will. This is especially true when you've got a pit in your stomach screaming for just one bite of cheese, but Lose It! makes the goal-setting and the accounting and the review side of things as easy as I can imagine.

The other application that I've started using is "iFitness", which is an iPhone exercise log. This was the other element that I logged during BFL: weights and reps and exercises. This logging also was a hassle, and also was really important to my success. Without a weightlifting log, the tendency is to repeat what you did the previous week, to stop at about the same point, and to not improve. This isn't the way to rapidly grow muscle, and isn't what is meant by "high-intensity".

Keeping a paper log was a pain in the ass, and iFitness delivers in much the same way that Lose It! does. It's easy to create a set of daily routines (in my case "shoulders/back", "chest/abs", "arms", "legs", and "cardio only"). There's a database of exercises, sortable by body part, with pictures of the movement, and detailed instructions (which aren't necessary for me, but which are probably very useful to someone who has done less weightlifting in their lives). And there's an easy weight/rep entry mode, for use on the fly at the gym. Plus the ability to quickly check previous weights and reps. Plus graphs of the history. Sweet!

With my iPhone handy in my pocket at the gym, I can quickly punch in the weight and reps, and look at the next exercise, all within the 1 minute recovery period that I allow between sets. This means that I can, as with the paper record, see what I did last time, and do better (more weight, or more reps, or both) this time. But easier than on paper, and with better tracking.

Together, these two applications (Lose It! and iFitness) are exactly what I'd been hoping for, for the iPhone. They're more than meeting my needs, and making it hard to think of a reason to quit. And the fat is getting burned up, at a record pace.

UPDATE: Apparently there's a Harvard prof who agrees with me about the "calories in, calories out" thing. Good for him. But he got paid to prove it, whereas I can confidently say that I'm right, without the need for any expensive study. Amazing what passes for research at Harvard.

Priceless quote from the Digg comments about the Harvard "research":


There's an overweight person I know who always talks about
how "I barely eat anything. All I had today was a salad.
My metabolism is so slow, I just pack on the weight."

Protip: You're getting the energy/calories to support your
massive size from somewhere, and it sure as fuck's not
photosynthesis.

Hahahaha. Awesome.

Food Porn

2009-02-19T17:43:00.001-08:00

Pornography is titillating in spite of (or sometimes because of) showing something you'd not actually want to do, or be allowed to do, yourself. It's also a nice outlet when you're away from the real thing.

This is true of sex porn, and it's absolutely true of food porn, too.

Being very careful what I eat lately in an effort to shed a winter coat, I've naturally gravitated to the seedier side of food porn. And I feel like sharing, lucky reader.

For starters, the Jersey Breakfast Dog (recipe here). It always gets my juices flowing, just thinking about biting down on that weiner and feeling the hot sticky gush of cheese on the roof of my mouth. I wouldn't know whether to gulp it down, or really savor the mouth feel.

Same with the hotness that is the Quadruple Bypass Burger (sold at the Heart Attack Grill). I'm in awe at the sheer visual of so much meat between those tanned buns. I need to try that!

And how about Baconnaise (buy it here)? Mayonnaise has long been my food additive of choice. Imagine it with bacon! I'd gladly lick this creamy goodness out of the cleft between soft bread slices. Oh yeah.

Admittedly my food tastes generally run to fats more than sweets. But for real kink, you gotta cross your self-imposed boundaries, and try something outrageous, like...

Bacon Ice Cream (recipe here). I get aroused just thinking about burying my face in those two creamy mounds of pleasure.

Or, perhaps most telling of all, the Krispy Kreme Bacon Cheddar Cheeseburger (thanks, ccaviness, for the unforgettable cheesy photo). Sometimes hot, greasy, finger-sucking, moaning, guilty pleasure is just what the doctor ordered.

Excuse me. I've gotta go find a napkin.

Monkey Faceoff

2009-02-18T16:54:00.001-08:00

In the news today, a pet chimpanzee nearly killed the owner's friend, without using traditional human killing tools.

My first reaction, after reading the story, was "what a total dumbshit". I mean the owner of the chimp, of course.

Here's a quick list of reasons why she's a dumbshit, readily gleaned from reading just the one article:

1) She kept a pet chimp, and apparently let it wander around the house, and treated it like a human child. Chimpanzees are not domesticated, and, in spite of (because of?) being fairly smart, are powerful and sometimes warlike wild animals.

2) It was a 200-pound male chimp. In her house. In residential Connecticut.

3) She's 70 years old, but let a 200-pound wild animal with thumbs run around the house with her. She really should have considered a chihuahua or weinerdog or toy poodle instead. Something that you can kill by stepping on it.

4) Her response, when the chimp went apeshit, was to pick up the phone and call someone. She obviously thinks that the police live in her cupboard, and will just magically spring out and immediately solve things for her.

5) She stayed on the phone for 12 minutes. Perhaps she ought to have started stabbing the chimp with a kitchen knife a few minutes earlier.

6) She said that she has no regrets about keeping the chimp in captivity. Well, lessee if her friend Charla agrees when she wakes up with no face or fingers.

7) The chimp is grossly overweight in the photo from 2003. Perhaps that has something to do with her feeding him "filet steak and lobster tails". Learn to google for proper chimpanzee diet, plskthnxbye.

8) She said, "We share DNA. How many people go crazy and kill other people?" Two answers to that gem of a quote. First, heck, lady, you share most of your base pairs with lions, too. And second, the answer to your question is "lots".

9) She is not Jane Goodall.

10) A chimpanzee is an ape, not a monkey. She, of all people, ought to know this most basic of facts about chimps.

I tried to be charitable, and did find one not-a-dumbshit point for her:

1) It occurs to her now that her friend's near-total change of appearance might have set it off. Perhaps the chimp was protecting her.

...unfortunately offset by another dumbshit point:

11) It didn't occur to her that her friend's near-total change of appearance might be best handled with the chimp in a cage for first introductions.

Sigh. Almost a Darwin Award, except that the chimp sadly savaged her friend, and not her. "Police have said Mrs Herold could also face criminal charges as a result of the attack." God, I hope so. She abused the animal when it was alive, kept it without knowing basic things about it, and clearly caused the injuries to her friend through at least contributory negligence.

As Ron White famously says, "You can't fix stupid".

Clean Up or Shut Up

2009-02-07T15:06:00.000-08:00

A while ago, I stated that, contrary to popular belief, water and electronics did mix, so long as the electronics aren't powered at the time, and so long as they are thoroughly dried before the reapplication of power.

I asserted that you could wash your keyboard in the dishwasher, with suitable care, and have it come out the other side just fine.

Which got me thinking....

My keyboard was looking pretty grotty.

First, I inverted it and tapped it out on the desk. Little bits of dead skin, hair, and god knows how many dust mites spilled out on to my desk. Ew. Don't believe me? Take your keyboard, right now, lift it up above your head with arms fully extended, look up at it, invert it, and give it a shake. Nasty, huh?

Not wanting to merely make soup in the dishwasher, I used a Shop Vac to get out some more hair and dust. I was careful to only approach the keyboard from the side, and gingerly, so as not to lose keys to the all-powerful suckage.

This treatment alone was a significant improvement. But the keys were still stained all sorts of nasty, and so a good washing was clearly in order.

Three screws held the top and bottom together. I removed and saved these, then lifted off the key part, carefully disconnecting it from the base electronics by removing a couple ribbon cables. I also noted that there was a wee plastic retainer thingy, that wasn't held on by anything other than the top itself, and that would surely end up in the bottom of the dishwasher, or in the garbage disposal, if allowed to remain through a full cycle. I removed and reserved it, too.

Underneath, there were some stick-on EMC tabs, and a wrap of tape to hold ferrites in place. Both seemed okay as-is, but did run the risk of losing stickage and vanishing into the sewer if the adhesive gave way.

To try to prevent this, I selected a low-temp cycle, and turned off the heated dry option.

The pieces went in, along with a small amount of dish soap. I chose to run just the keyboard, without dishes, so as to reduce the chance of the ultra-common "pasta under the R key" syndrome. I also stacked it vertically, to reduce the jet pressure upon it.

Offering up a brief prayer to Murphy, I started the cycle and walked away.

After the cycle concluded, I opened the washer to find that everything was still as I had placed it, without any missing adhesives or pieces that I could (or rather, could not) see.

I removed the pieces, shook off the excess water, and placed them in a drying rack on the counter. They were sparkly clean, if nothing else!

I waited a day, then carefully reassembled the keyboard. I plugged it in to a USB hub (so that if it killed something it was the hub, and not my computer's built in USB!). I typed some experimental text:

Th quickbown fox jumprd ovth lazydog's tail.  How much woodcoulda woodchuckchuck if awoodchuck could chuckwood?  We cetainly ae aticulat, an'twe?

Hmmm. It seemed that the R and E and space keys were not entirely up to snuff. Alternately, perhaps they actually were working properly, but I was drunk, stoned, or both.

I disconnected the keyboard, and popped off the R key. Inside, I found...water!

Guess it wasn't quite dry yet. I re-dis-assembled the keyboard, gave it a good shake, and popped it back on the drying rack.

That was several days ago, and so I gave it another try today. Same drill: reassemble it, and try some experimental text.

What you're reading is the experimental text. It survived! In fact, my keyboard seems to be in perfect working order, and clean, to boot! Another win for science, and thus another loss for creationism and astrology.

Pear Pig and Purple Mash

2009-02-05T16:56:00.000-08:00

Last week, I was reading the January 2009 copy of Cook's Illustrated (which was a great Christmas present, thanks very much!), and saw a recipe for Swedish meatballs, "done right". This consisted of a mixture of both pork and beef, and some careful attention to processing, to get the texture right and avoid turning them into little unappetizing golf balls bathed in gelatinous gravy.

High tech meatballs sounded like good fun, so I stopped by the Fred Meyer on the way home from the gym, and picked up the necessary ingredients, including an 8-pack of boneless pork loin chops, to be ground up later.

This is not a Fred Meyer story.

The following Sunday afternoon, I was baking bread, using The Bread Baker's Apprentice (which was a great Christmas present, thanks very much!). I've been working on ciabatta, using their techniques. My first attempt (a couple weeks ago) didn't rise suitably, and turned out like a baseball bat. It got nibbled despondently, then trashed. My second attempt (also a couple weeks ago) also didn't rise suitably, and turned out like a scorched baseball bat. It got trashed without preamble or nibbling.

I then cleverly stopped using the yeast that I'd been saving since 1999. My third attempt (a week and a half ago, using fresh yeast) rose beautifully, puffing up like an aroused sea cucumber. I chickened out, pulling it out from the oven before it cooked enough, and so it had a great inside but premature crust. I ate it anyhow, and it was delicious, earthy, chewy, amazing.

It was not, however, ciabatta.

Which brings us to the attempt last weekend. I had dough proofing for two loaves and was about to leave for the gym, when my brother called to ask if I'd had dinner. He was in town from California, briefly, to try to pick up someone at a local bar, or something like that. I'm a bit hazy on the details. After a brief discussion, I went to the gym, with promises to feed him and show him a fun movie that I'd snagged off BitTorrent slightly before it hit the theaters, if he came by my place after.

I rashly decided that I'd make stromboli. It's dough, and meat, and cheese, rolled up and baked, as I understood it. Never made it before, hadn't looked at a recipe, but hey, how hard could it be?

So I coarsely cubed and jammed 4 of the 8 boneless pork loin chops into the food processor, minced them into a near-paste. Diced an onion. Tossed the pork, onion, and some hamburger (that had also been slated for the Swedish meatballs) into a pan. Cranked up the heat. Added fennel seed, cumin, garlic powder, chili powder. Browned it all, breaking it into small pieces as I went.

I gingerly stretched out half the dough (which, it turned out, was very resilient, as ciabatta dough tends to be). I got it to about 15" by 30", and pretty darn thin. Added the drained, crumbled meat mixture. Sparingly spooned on some chunky spaghetti sauce from the pantry, then grated on quite a bit of cheese. Tried to roll it up. Rutro! It was too thin, and partially stuck to the counter, and didn't want to roll without coaxing or tearing, or both. I managed somehow, and ended up with a sea cucumber (an angry-looking one, this time). Tried to lift it onto parchment paper. Nothing doing; it was gonna rip through and spill its guts, for sure.

My brother (who has also been baking recently, must run in the family) suggested strombolini, miniature stromboli ("-ini" is a feminine Italian word ending meaning "finger-licking good"). Oooo! After he explained what he meant, I sliced the stromboli choad into about 1-inch wheels, and flopped them over on parchment paper, like very messy but savory cinnamon rolls. They looked like complete shit in their raw state.

Bro said that he'd been through the exact same cycle of setback and self-doubt, and that they'd look great when cooked, promise. So, into the oven on a pizza stone preheated to 500 F. The parchment paper nearly ignited, but the strombolini turned out beautifully, all puffy and crispy and cheesy and wow. They looked, as he said, "like they came out of a gourmet bakery". Thanks, bro, for the save and the compliment!

The remaining ciabatta loaf, by the way, also turned out spectacularly, all puffy and crispy, with perfectly-sized air holes, everything that I intended. This was for extra credit.

But that's not what this story is about. Remember that I said that I bought 8 boneless pork loin cutlets, and used 4 for the strombolini? A reckoning was inevitable.

On Monday, when my wife returned from her social trip to San Francisco, she reminded me that we still needed to sort out travel plans for the tropics. I promised to contact our friends about it the next day.

Tuesday, I completely forgot to contact those friends until she texted me a reminder. As an homage to a particular Kids In The Hall skit, I said that it slipped my mind, that I felt awful about it, and that I promised to do it that night, and cook a nice dinner for her, and still make it to the gym.

For lunch, I recalled that I still had those 4 unused pork chops, undergoing what one might charitably call "wet aging" in the refrigerator, but which was really an inevitable and perpetual march towards spoilage and biogenesis. I seared them all off in a pan, temporarily thwarting the process, and ate one for lunch. It was very tasty.

5 o'clock found me at Market of Choice, looking for something quick for dinner. Reheating a couple strombolini was probably not gonna cut it.

Pork, pork, what goes well with pork? Sweet and fruity, that's what! I grabbed a couple pears, and a jug of apple juice. The gorgonzola cheese in the section near the veggies looked good; I grabbed some of that. Pears and blue cheese, y'know? Needed a starch, too. Potatoes. They had purple potatoes, for a buck a pound. Interesting. Grabbed some of those. In the bulk food section, I snagged about a quarter pound of pitted dates, thinking that they'd somehow help the pear in the sweet whatever I was going to make.

Home. Four cups of apple juice into a sauce pan, with the dates and a handful of raisins, burner turned up to max. Potatoes diced into water with some salt, boiled until tender while I worked on other things. I reduced the apple juice thing down to about 1 cup of liquid, where it was noticeably thickened, and all of the dates swelled up like fat palm grubs. Into the food processor, where it was pureed, and then back into the pan. I added the pre-cooked pork chops from the fridge, about a teaspoon of curry powder, salt, pepper. Let it simmer. Diced and added a pear, being careful to remove those fucking little food stickers that seem to hide on the dark side of the fruit, and leap into dishes of their own volition.

Side note: If the food sticker code has five digits, then the first digit is either a 9, meaning organic, or an 8, meaning genetically modified. The rest of the code is the same number as the normal (not organic, not GM) code. For example, bananas are 4011, organic bananas are 94011, and bananas with a bit of pig DNA spliced in would be 84011.

I drained the potatoes, coarse mashed them, added some milk and a pat of butter and about a quarter pound of the crumbled gorgonzola, salt and lots of pepper.

Nuked some broccoli trees briefly, added a splash of truffle oil and some imported seasoning salt that I get smuggled back from Italian grocery stores.

Dinner got served!

Gorgeous tender pork, with a thick, sweet, slightly curried sauce, with chunks of ripe pear that were warm but not mushy, bright purple cheesy mashed taters, and vivid green broccoli. Crazy colors. Pears and blue cheese thing going on. Truffle aroma, crunchy broccoli. Different textures vibrating in every direction. Holy moly, that was good!

I even went to the gym that night. I forgot to contact the friends about travel, though. And I never did get to the meatballs.

Slipped my mind. But tell you what, I feel awful about it.