The Art of Making a Life

Netflix unintentional bias

2009-04-19T19:56:00.008-05:00

So it occurred to me this evening to see if you could find foreign language films on Netflix by searching for the language in question. As it turned out you can, sometimes, which is not so surprising or funny. But the part that left me cracking up and searching for more was the "Related Genres" section of the results. For example:

Searching for French we get Homework Help and Language Instruction and Romantic Movies (standard issue Parisian bias there on the last one, no?). But we also get Sexual-Awakening Movies (why does this get a hyphen?), Steamy Movies, and Revenge Movies. Revenge Movies?

Ok, let's try another language:

Relatively commonly learned language, so we still get Homework and Instruction. And Romantic. Fair enough. But now we also get Dark Movies, Spy Movies, Suspenseful Movies, and Visually-striking Movies (Are they not allowed to have more than two separate words in their database?) Are German movies more often visually striking than their French counterparts?

English:

Apparently English movies (or movies with the word English in the title, of course) are more likely Feel-good, Goofy, Heartfelt, or feature Mistaken-Identity or a Strong Female Lead. Really? Is this just the ocean of movies about female royalty? And I thought I was on to something about the reason for hyphenation until we hit "Movies Featuring a Strong Female Lead"

Irish? (Sorry, couldn't help it...):

So much for the language learning aspect now, but we have the relatively upbeat Comedies, Con-Game, and Music, but the rest of it is Dark, Independent, or Suspenseful. And nixy nixy on the romance and steaminess.

And apparently Japanese movies are understated and may involve wilderness survival.

SXSW music reviews

2008-03-24T13:01:00.002-05:00

This made for great lunchtime reading. The reviews are perfect bitesize bits. (Even without listening to the clips.) Check the sweet blurbs between sections. Discovered via the latest "Brief Message". Locals Cyn² & the Pons scored.

Short is harder than it seems.

10 weeks tomorrow - and a picture!

2007-08-28T17:40:00.000-05:00

Yep, 10 weeks! And you can take my lack of posts as witness of the fact that my life is returning to normal. I can now walk (fighting that tempting limp). Last night I went to my first yoga class since before surgery. This afternoon I biked down to the water (3 blocks away) and then a little way around the bay and back again. That was even easy :) I don't have my full range of motion back yet, but easy going... I'll get there.

Any PT-minded folks peering at this? If not I'll lay off the PT updates, but for now: still in the pool - walking forwards, backwards, and sideways, leg swings, abduction, adduction, squats and gentle jogging/jumping. This week I tried a gentle flutter kick down and back holding onto a kickboard and that wasn't too bad.

My only real trouble for now is that my tendon doesn't move smoothly over the 2 temporary screws I have, so anything that goes from dead straight to a slight bend (walking, stairs) annoys the heck out of it. The bonus? My leg doesn't get straight enough when I'm biking for it to be an issue!

speedy update

2007-08-10T08:02:00.000-05:00

Seven and a half weeks out and life is good! I'm down to one crutch (pulled that off at 6 weeks and have been so busy since that the blog has been somewhat abandoned). My PT and surgeon are thrilled with where I am now. I've been working on one new party trick a day - Wednesday was driving :)

Today'll be the real test... 10 or 11 hours in a car... somewhat scary.

5 weeks and change

2007-07-26T14:17:00.001-05:00

So the magic days have arrived. Yesterday I went to the pool down the street from our house during lap-swim time in the morning. (What an amazing place is that?!) I discovered they have one of those cool accessibility chairs that can lower you into the 3' deep section of the pool. In I went and started trying to figure out how to move forward again. My sweet mother came along to get me there and to act as a human crutch as needed, but I found I only really needed to lean for the first bit of time. Before long I figured out that I could still sort of propel myself forward on either foot. Very very odd feeling. And most of the time I was reminded of the Ministry of Silly Walks (mouse over the bits in that second link for the full effect).

In the evening I gave a go to a stationary bike for about 10 minutes and that felt pretty good too. No residual misery today aside from feeling like it's all been gently used. This morning I hit the pool again. Things are looking up!

And the next patient in the extended family is now just post-surgery. K came through her shoulder surgery with flying colors. (A will hopefully get a date for his knee surgery tomorrow.) She's now home being well cared for and spending hours sitting in her 'continuous passive motion' chair where I'm sure she'll grow bored, but at least the Vicodin is doing its job!

Anybody else out there scheduled for a knife? How can there be so many at once?

why I love designers

2007-07-26T14:11:00.000-05:00

“…it’s an incurable, if not mortal disease. I can’t explain it. I just like looking at type. I get a total kick out of it. They are my friends. Other people look at bottles of wine or girls' bottoms, I get kicks out of looking at type.” --Erik Spiekermann (via Subtraction)

moonscapes

2007-07-20T13:13:00.000-05:00

So I've been a little slow about getting my xray of my hip screws scanned in, but in the meantime I have other entertaining pictures for you!

Yesterday we had the ducts cleaned in our house. I was sitting at the dining room table finishing breakfast when I saw the truck pull up outside. I said peaceably to A, "They're here, and they're backing into your car." Adam went to the front door to let him in and then I saw him bolt outside - turned out the fellow really was backing into his car, or at least the back corner of it. I didn't think I was serious!

Once that was all sorted out (and with everyone still in good humor, though the man was looking a little undone by the whole thing) he got to work on the cleaning. They essentially attach an enormous vacuum to your vents in the basement, and then go room to room cleaning things out manually. About 3 hours later after running tubes all over the house and saran-wrapping a few vents here and there to help things along he was finished and came up to the living room where I was crashed out with my book and laptop. He handed me these before & afters:

That one on the bottom really is what it looks like - a wooden duct. We have one of those in the basement from way back when. The rest are happily metal. These are scary though, aren't they?

When was the last time you had your ducts cleaned? Worried now?

4 weeks out

2007-07-18T16:50:00.000-05:00

Yep, 4 weeks today. Two more to go with the sticks which are getting nastier since I'm now up for trying to go greater distances. Like to the Art Fair on the Square last Saturday, which was great for making me feel like I'm back in the world, but rough on the body. As a result I spent Sunday on the couch and have been nursing my hands ever since. But they made me a balloon animal snail to attach to my crutch (unfortunately it only lasted about half a block before it popped), and a sweet volunteer couple watching a small table with some leaflets told me to come sit down for a minute and pointed to their three knee scars between the two of them from joint replacements. "We know what that feels like" - and they looked like they did.

And also traveling farther like back to work. I haven't gotten as far as busing in both directions yet, but I've done bus one way and a lift the other. I have to say that even with a bus route that goes directly from half a block up my street to the road right in front of the hospital it's still a rough trip. If I had to transfer I'd probably tell them I'd be another 2 weeks before returning!

Yay for University sick leave allotments though.

Why Man Creates (nope, not getting all philosophical just yet)

2007-07-12T16:22:00.000-05:00

Brilliant.

Somehow the name Saul Bass never stuck with me, or I never even heard it go by. He's done close to 60 title sequences for films (lots of Hitchcock), movie posters, logos (one of the old really well known AT&T 'bells', the first AT&T globe logo years later, Girl Scouts of America). In short I should have figured out who he was a long time ago.

More samples of his work at the ever-present if somewhat untrustworthy wikipedia.

This is a 5 minute preview of a half hour short from the late 60s. I'd love to see the full length piece, but alas, Netflix hasn't copped on yet.

moitié/moitié!

2007-07-11T09:43:00.000-05:00

3 weeks down, 3 weeks to go (well, on the crutches anyway). After that I can start working my way back to normal activity!

The thing about being out for surgery is that just about the time you're starting to feel better you get ideas about little things you could do to pass the time, but once you actually feel up to doing them it's time to admit that you should be thinking about getting back to work. I've still been crashing out mid-way through the day, and as often as not, dozing off during an evening movie, but I think I'll start trying a few short days at work again. You'd think a hospital would be good with all the accessibility, but it turns out that working in a city unto itself has some drawbacks. The main one is that you can travel an easy half mile just to get from one place to another in the building (door to office for example). Maybe there are more advantages to a 20 person office than I realized!

I've been working up to it though... took a crutch around the block the other evening, and getting back to playing my flute again (that didn't used to feel aerobic!).

For today it's Edward Scissorhands (I'm amazed that's been out for 17 years and I still haven't seen it), a shower, a nap, and then maybe going in to clear out the inbox at work this afternoon...

17 days post-op

2007-07-07T21:12:00.000-05:00

Aside from getting generally exhausted when I try to do too much (like travel further than half a block or so) things are still going really well. I'm dreaming of things like a yoga class, or even just a short go on a stationary bike, but it's another 2 and a half weeks before I get to think about anything more than keeping my weight off the leg.

My latest good news is that the incision apparently looks great - really clean work. My nurse was all impressed when she took off the steri-strips this week. No staples, no external stitches. A longer scar than I expected but if the hip is better I'm all good with that. And I'm down to a Tylenol just now and again when I need it - not even every day.

At 5 weeks I get to start on a stationary bike with no added resistance, and water walking, and I can start putting about 50% of my weight on the leg when I use my crutches. At 6 weeks I get to start real PT and can ditch the crutches as soon as I feel safe.

I'm thinking I might try a half day of work toward the end of next week, and keep it up if it goes ok.

In non-me-related news (personal blogs are narcissistic anyway, but it feels especially so when all I'm doing is typing about how the aches and pains are going!): It turns out A's knee is well and truly toasted. He had his MRI this week and the ACL isn't even remotely still attached. He's still getting around fine for now as long as he doesn't look over his shoulder when he's walking but he's going in for a surgical consultation this week. At least the UW ACL repair docs are highly respected! We're hoping maybe for sometime in August so that I'm able to drive again before he's unable to...

Zoiks.

the ability to follow a thought from one end to the other

2007-07-02T10:15:00.000-05:00

Sorry for the delay in posting - I was finally able to be up and out of the house and it's been brilliant. And exhausting! One of those odd situations for anyone reading though where you wouldn't know if the lack of communication was a total lack of ability due to a downturn, or if I just wasn't at the computer. I'm happy to report that for the most part I just wasn't at the computer.

Our good friends A & E were married on Saturday with great celebrations all weekend, just a few short blocks from our house in their newly acquired very long and treed back yard. It was a beautiful wedding and the food was great which is good news since it's the same folks A and I are planning to use for our own festivities.

This weekend I saw State St for a short while (and looked longingly up at the Kanopy windows). I went to Brennans (lovely fruit wine cheese fish market) where a sweet older woman asked me what happened and looked like she knew from experience how good it feels those first few days up and around again. And I completely wore myself out, but that's alright because it gave me the chance to feed my newly acquired addiction to the Canadian tv show 'Slings & Arrows.' I've now burned through all the shows from 2 seasons (12 episodes total). There's a third season which gets released on DVD tomorrow as far as I can tell from Netflix. Thanks, P, for the loan of the first two seasons!

Now that I'm clear of the drugs I can even read again. And keep track of the storyline between paragraphs. I knew my brain was fighting for it last week Monday when I tried the Washington Post crossword and it was hopeless. On a Monday! I'd hate to think the depression that might have set in if I'd tried a Friday puzzle. Today was much better for that so I think the neurons are firing again. Would I be scared if I went back and read my posts from last week? I'm just about finished reading The Dante Club, but I haven't seen it since before the surgery. If I can find that around the house today maybe I'll polish it off. I'm dreaming of the new Haruki Murakami novel After Dark. Right now I'm 34 on the library's list for it. If I could handle reading it in either Japanese or Korean I'd only be 4th or 5th on the list! In the meantime a copy of Anne Rice's The Witching Hour is sitting on our dining room table and I wandered a good way into the start of that over breakfast this morning.

As for a short medical update, it occurs to me that I haven't had a pain killer since getting up today, and I'm doing alright. After the misery of the narcotics I dropped down to a single extra strength Tylenol every 5 or 6 hours. The incision is longer than I'd expected, but it looks like it was very well put back together. I've been gently massaging it, and the nerve endings are still a little confused but not too bad.

It's been great to get to see those of you who have stopped by or who I ran into this weekend. I like solitude and miss it when I don't get any, but of course enforced solitude is something else altogether. So, thank you!

drugs, schmugs

2007-06-29T08:09:00.000-05:00

It's amazing to me that the pain really hasn't been the worst of this thing. They tried me on a different narcotic - one that is supposed to be widely tolerated - and it was just as bad on my system. I don't think I was hallucinating but I haven't felt so sick with the flu as I did with the drugs. So that's it for me - Tylenol it is. Yesterday I worked my way through a fair bit of ginger ale and some crackers, eventually working my way up to rice - yippee!

For now I'm just looking forward to feeling well enough to attend my friends' wedding tomorrow, and I'm really bummed about a show tonight at Montmartre that I'd love to see, but other than that I think I'm on the mend.

8 days post-op

2007-06-28T10:05:00.001-05:00

yuck

pain meds

2007-06-26T16:35:00.000-05:00

yesterday was a particularly nasty day. Percocet and I don't get on well. That's what I'd been on since surgery and on Sunday I was finally able to piece together that the hallucinations were thanks to the Percocet. I kept dozing off and waking myself up a minute later talking to someone who wasn't there. That alone I might have been able to hack, but it was making me feel dead-ill besides... didn't want food, dizzy, nauseous. So I swapped out to Tylenol yesterday while I tried to get in touch with my doc, but it wasn't cutting it and I couldn't get through to him. Finally later in the day I caught a nurse who suggested trying a half dose of the Perc but that threw me back into feeling awful. Thankfully the nurse had a bright idea of mixing Tylenol with a benedryl which serves to make you sleepy enough that you doze off and your body can get back to healing itself.

Last night I slept for about 12 hours (not quite straight, but close).

Achy allover today but some swelling is going down a bit. Sick of the anti-embolism stockings.

But so glad to not have the issues from the Percocet. I made the same choice after my wisdom teeth were out and they gave me hydrocodone. Pain over drugs.

feeling human

2007-06-24T14:53:00.000-05:00

4 days post-op and I'm actually feeling human! I took a shower for the first time today (bath-in-a-bag is great, but there's just nothing like a shower) and I'm off the anti-nausea meds. We learned they not only fix the nausea, but also make you dizzy and weak, and they block some seratonin production. In other words the faster you can quit taking it the better.

It feels nice to sit up for meals and crutch out to the back porch for some fresh air, and with the great weather I can at least have all the windows open.

Sorry for the lack of updates in the last few days but I've definitely been fogging in and out. In any case everything is going well, and I'm much more coherent now!

home safe

2007-06-21T15:02:00.000-05:00

I'm home from the hospital and achy but doing very well. Halucinating a bit on the pain meds so I think I'll crash out and sleep for a while..

So far the only picture I have is an x-ray taken after the screws were put in. I'll post images I have available eventually...

the world needs more Lerts

2007-06-21T05:55:00.000-05:00

I'm awake and alert (as of about 1:30 yesterday) and the doctor said the surgery went very well! In a nice twist they didn't do general anesthesia - an epidural and then just enough in my IV to keep me in a gentle sleep. I remember the first needle go and then I woke up in the recovery room.

The great thing about not being under general is that I don't really have an 'anesthesia hangover - no nausea and not too dopey feeling.

I spent the night fogging in and out of sleep with continuous episodes of CSI, Alias, and Angel.

Thanks for all your good thoughts!

toes

2007-06-20T00:14:00.000-05:00

Life keeps you on them. Your toes, that is. A came home from his frisbee game tonight with a knee he can hardly put weight on! We talked to a nurse-on-call and she said to ice it and wait to see how it's feeling in the morning. Good thing we have a spare pair of crutches around.

surgery schedule

2007-06-19T17:50:00.000-05:00

9:15 am - arrive at Stoughton Hospital

10:15 or 10:30 - into surgery

The surgery will last "at least 2 hours" and then 45 minutes in the recovery room.

1:30 - pretty much the soonest I can expect to be somewhat coherent. Maybe later if the surgeon finds extra cartilage junk to clean out.

The phone number at Stoughton Hospital is 608.873.6611

former patient

2007-06-19T09:22:00.000-05:00

I've been going through bouts of being fabulously nervous about this whole deal, but I was able to do one thing that helped me feel better. My doctor's office arranged to let me talk with a former patient of my same surgeon. Trying to do that is the best advice I could give anyone going through a major procedure. I spoke with a guy who's 4 years younger than me and went through an open FAI procedure in late January. Before his hip went bad he was a baseball player (a right handed pitcher with a bad right hip) and running 10 or 15 miles a week. Now he's pitching again and back to running. He said at 6 and a half weeks he was walking without crutches or a limp and that he was starting to jog a bit within 3 months.

He also said Friday is going to be miserable. Apparently they usually give an epidural for this procedure in addition to the general anesthetic. The epidural has a 24 to 48 hour window of effectiveness, so waking up on Friday morning isn't so much fun. On the up-side he said that by Sunday he felt fairly human.

I'll be calling this afternoon to find out the actual time of my surgery. They expect that it will be in the morning, which would mean heading out to Stoughton Hospital around 6 or 7 and then leaving the next morning. I'll see if I can find out when they expect me to be coherent too...

reanimating, deanimating

2007-06-09T18:25:00.000-05:00

This has truly been the great abandoned blog. To be quite honest I got a bit weirded out by the basic voyeuristic nature of personal blogs. I have been living plenty of my life in a somewhat public arena among my various artistic endeavors.

I think this summer might be a good time to bring some life back in to the abandoned blog. A few reasons:

(here's the deanimation portion of the title) I'll be basically stuck in the house for a good 6 weeks post surgery later this month and likely bored out of my mind with not much in reach but my pain meds, a big stack of books, regular doses of Netflix, and my laptop. Reaching out to the world out of my house gets appealing under these circumstances!
The reason for the surgery is something that is a relatively new (last 10 years or so) diagnosis and it seems most patients are desperate to learn anything they can from other people that are going/have gone through it. So for anyone who finds this and has been diagnosed with a torn labrum and FAI (femoral acetabular or femoroacetabular impingement) you can keep watching here and I'll feed you all sorts of details about my experiences with the diagnosis, the procedure itself and the progress of my hip's recovery. I'll be having an open surgical dislocation with femoral notchplasty. They'll burr down part of the ball of the femur, repair and reattach the labrum, and burr down part of the bone on the pelvic side of things. I'll even tag posts so you can ignore the non-hip musings.

For those of you who used to keep an eye on this set of musings, but don't get to see me very much or at all (or don't know me!) here's the update (admitting to that voyeuristic nature in blog readers):

In the last year I have...

gotten engaged:
bought a house:
relieved the dying pan of its duties
finally finished and released a third cd

So there you have it folks. My cortisone shot has been fading so my time here will likely be increasing as I make good friends with the couch!

and the dish ran away with the spoon

2006-05-09T19:57:00.000-05:00

Some days are good days to be in the kitchen. And then again...

What you see here is a small pan of pasta sauce. And yes, that's the handle sitting on the counter next to the stove. On the up side, when the handle came off it didn't give me a chance to lift the pot enough for anything extremely red to happen.

As in any good Dr. Seuss story, where there is a thing one, there is always a thing two.

I decided it was probably time to pull the broccoli, having checked it just recently when it was very nearly ready. I walked it over to the sink, lifted the lid,

and pulled the little ring in the middle to lift the veggie steamer out of the pot... and the ring came off. It took me a second to figure out what happened (somewhat slow when hungry). At first I thought it was just the evening for handles to separate from their objects. But of course the truth of the matter is what you see here. That's the bottom of the steamer. Note the rather black innards of the pot. The dark round splotches you see are very flattened versions of what were once little feet on the bottom of the steamer. And of course the stem of the steamer had melted most of the way up so the ring came off because everything below it was nearly liquid.

I start to see why it is that all the plastic veggie steamers on the internet are listed as "microwave vegetable steamers. (Let me say in my own defense that I've been using this one this way for a long time with no ill effects - and more water, I reckon.) I suppose it's time to go in for one of the stainless ones. I also suspect that the time for these pots to serve is nearly over. This is the first time the handle of the little pot has come off mid-cook, but the one on the matching saute pan has a tendency to go wobbly. They've had a good long life now. They all came from the same original set, purchased by my mother at something like age 25 with her first symphony paycheck.

robins and convenient surroundings

2006-04-12T21:36:00.000-05:00

This week has been all about being saved by my surroundings. I don't mean this in any life or death sense, but just in the simple realization that sometimes thing really are easier than they appear if you just notice what's nearby.

On Monday I got to work only to remember that I had an extra rehearsal that evening for dance - just a quick hour - but I hadn't remembered any dance clothes. I realized I could get away with my shirt, so it was just the bottom half that was missing. I popped into Ragstock 15 minutes before rehearsal started that night and found the only pair of stretch pants they had in the place - one pair, in one size, which happened to fit, and happened to cost $1.06 including tax. My apparel brain wasn't functioning much better today. I went into rehearsal in the morning with all my dance clothes in tow but got there and realized I'd forgotten a bra to wear for the rest of the day. With a smart recommendation from L I popped into Wintersilks after rehearsal, during my quick walk to the bus stop and found a black lacy bra/cami that fit perfectly (didn't bother to try it on, but hey, it's stretch) marked down for a total of a whopping $5.25.

I love State Street.

I'm starting to think I should take after Candy and post bruise shots. I put on an outfit the other day and realized it not only made visible, but perfectly accented the three bruises I had going at the time. In addition to "appreciate your surroundings" week (easy solutions AND real warm weather and leaf buds and ROBINS) it's also been "let the body heal" week. I did a photo shoot last week for the advanced photo students out at MATC. They wanted some dancers so they could work on catching motion and up in the air bits. 4 hours later my back was voicing displeasure. By Sunday I was alternately getting a few things done and laying flat out on the couch asking for things to be brought to me (when they were mere feet away). Feeling a bit better today.

I'll post a few pics once I get them back if any of them want posting...

I'll have to go find some nice sun-warmed grass to lay on and let my back finish unknitting itself tomorrow!

all kinds of spray

2006-04-04T21:32:00.000-05:00

Today we finally went out to do a new photo shoot (about time). It's always good motivation when you were supposed to have a new photo to a festival *yesterday* (that's the mythical yesterday that means it was already supposed to have happened regardless of actual dates and times of requests). We had some great lighting as we were getting on toward sunset:

...but the wind was a bit of a bear:

Holy action shot, Batman!

Those shots were taken mere moments apart. I think mostly what we got were some great templates of shots we want to reshoot in kinder wind. There are a few where Sheila looks just like (name any model with big long hair) in those hairspray ads where they're trying to prove that you can do anything with their product. I am now convinced that all those shots are bunk and are just done in a wind tunnel.

A few minutes ago I ran down to the corner store. I love having a corner store I can run down to. (I did actually drive somewhere today but I also love the fact that I drive rarely enough that I was clueless about the leaning toward $2.70 pump prices a friend retched about today.) But the real point here is that I love having a corner store. Some odd guy came in while I was in there and my first instinct was to make myself semi-invisible. He mumbled a few things at the person who runs the place - asking him to make change or something like that - and headed out again. I reappeared from the back of the store about to ask the owner a question about cough medicine only to find that he was wielding a can of Lysol over the entire airspace on the customer side of the counter. If it was enough to make the owner of a corner store try to instantly disinfect, I'm glad I was given the option of breathing in freshly sprayed Lysol instead.

Trompe L'Oeil

2006-03-21T17:06:00.000-06:00

What a funny way for the pavement to erode! ;-)
A co-worker recently passed this my way. The website is a bit rough, but the pictures are great. The artist (Julian Beever) has his own site too, with most of the same pictures. I love this sort of thing - especially in a city where your can make it feel less like a city, or less like you have a brick wall straight out your "window." Or now that I'm getting into this, there are also these, which are pretty trippy.

My cousins have done some fabulous paintings of this sort on the walls of their various abodes - I'll have to ask about a few of those pictures again. I remember them as being just amazing.

It's been a week of recovery around here. (...a quiet week in Lake Wobegon.) The house is too quiet and the chairs are too cold.

Fuzzy pictures

2006-03-17T08:40:00.000-06:00

I've fixed the pictures in Fionn's post, so you can scroll on down the page or see them in their own glory.

To make a full day of updating older posts, you can also now see the rest of the Irtrad-L thread about singing in languages other than your native. The navigation isn't very clear, but at the top of the page there's a back and forward arrow first, and then another set of back and forward arrows with what looks like a lightbulb (?) next to each one. That set is the one that will take you through the whole thread. Non-thrilling content disclaimer: Not much came of it in the end...

It's a beautiful sunny Lá Féile Phádraig here in Madison. Which at least makes all yesterday's snow beautiful if not entirely warm.

Sled dogs

2006-03-16T12:58:00.000-06:00

The Iditarod race finished up this week with a fellow winning for the fourth time. I had to laugh when I heard the announcement that in addition to his cash prize he also is awarded a new truck. I get that when they're not actually racing they have an amazing amount of stuff that they have to transport all over the place, but I still find it hilarious that a race devoted to transport by way of dog gives away a shiny new gas-powered beast.

Technical difficulties: I failed in my picture posting attempt with my last post, and considering it was mostly pictures that's a bit sad. I'll tweak it this evening, so come back and see the real thing!

Thanks, Fuzzy

2006-03-14T21:05:00.000-06:00

I've had a chance to tell most of you who knew him well, so now I think I can finally talk about it here. It was a bad weekend.

On Friday night A and I had to make the decision to have Fionn put to sleep. He would have turned 5 this summer. Fionn was a rescue cat - I was reminded by C that among other possible horrors I rescued him from his name given by the kind people at the Humane Society - Giovanni. (Apologies to all the Giovannis out there - it just wasn't right.) He jumped up on my lap in the meet-the-cats room at the Humane Society and started purring and knocking his head into mine. He was gregarious, and made people who didn't think they liked cats fall in love. He led a good short life.

Here he is with S and me, not long after he came home. (Note the nail polish - this secures the fact that it was just post-Halloween.) He loved to be held in any position... sideways, right side-up, upside-down, all 3 in quick succession, as long as he was in contact.

He had the chance to marvel at German snowflakes.

He helped me edit my masters thesis.

He charmed a big hulking heavy-stuff-mover at the Frankfurt airport. I was moving back home and had two enormous bags, a large cardboard box, a backpack, and Fionn. I could just barely pretend to manage all of it and a very kind airport hefter came to my aid moving everything through one of the screener machines for me. I was quite nervous about Fionn and all my things and suddenly couldn't see the man anywhere. I realized he was crouched down with his nose to Fionn's cage making cooing noises through the wires.

Fionn perfected the art of couch-diving.

We think Fionn was probably never properly weaned, since his greatest comfort was sleeping on top of a person, sucking on their shirt. He would just close his eyes and look like all was right with the world.

He was always happiest close to the action. Fionn had his own straight-backed chair in the living room here and whenever there were guests he was most likely to be found sitting on it paying close attention to the conversation. (Sounds like stories of me when I was a baby, when I was happiest falling asleep on a blanket in the middle of the floor when my parents were still up and especially if there were guests.)

We shared a love of nooks and books.

He was a good reminder of how to relax.

He listened nearby when I played flute and as with everything else, was totally curious. I remember for the first few months when he was still small and not so used to the sound, he would climb up on the nearest chair or table and put a paw over onto my knee and stick his face right across the embouchure from my nose to see where the sound was coming from.

A mechanical metronome was total fascination.

Bags and boxes were always to be investigated (yes, he is in all 3 pictures).

I'll miss being greeted at the door every day, and having him lay across my arms every time I work with my laptop on my lap.

Thanks, Fuzzy.

happy feet

2006-03-07T16:20:00.000-06:00

Well, at least they're on their way to being happy feet. The Kanopy show weekend is past and as always there's a little necessary space of letting my body find center again. I tweaked my foot badly on Saturday night but with tape, ice & ibu I was able to do the Sunday show. R took a good look at it before the show and said it was the sort of thing he'd seen heal quickly in the past. I was dubious after my 4 month healing process when I bruised my ankle bones & tissue last summer, but it's feeling lots lots better now. Not 100% but close enough that I forget about it most of the time.

To give you an idea of how out of it I was yesterday, I called around lunch time to see if I could still register for the Bill T Jones masterclass scheduled for the evening. It wasn't until about 2 hours later that I realized I didn't have 2 feet to dance on. Oy. Tonight is the BTJ show at the Overture though, so if I couldn't dance last night at least I can watch tonight!

enormous, but not overwhelming

2006-03-03T12:02:00.000-06:00

Inhabitat recently posted a single shelf bookshelf from an Amsterdam-based design house called Studio Frederik Roije. (Not re-posted here, but it's the first thing you see on the sfr site.) That one was a bit severe-feeling for me to put it in my own space, even though I like the design idea. Digging around the rest of their designs I found this (picture below) more extensive bookshelf called 'long legs.' The amazing thing to me about this design is that the space looks so open for having such a huge piece of furniture in it.

It's a cool modern piece but it reminds me of some of the intricate Asian wood patterns ( -> ) where the lines are all very clean (well spaced, horizontal & vertical only), but they can start and stop unexpectedly.

[edited for picture clarity - Fri afternoon]

doing justice

2006-03-03T10:52:00.000-06:00

I keep a loose eye on a listserv called IRTRAD-L. It devolves into scrappiness every so often like too many listservs. I ignore those bits as best I can and keep my eyes open for (very subjective) interesting discussions and news of new good music/musicians I should find. I have probably made 3 posts in the many years I've been subscribed. This morning I posted #4 to the list in response to a question about songs and singing in languages other than your own. Given what I've been up to for the last 7 years I could hardly keep quiet...

Original question to the list:

All,
Can a singers do justice to a song in a language that they are not fully fluent in (Irish) - and can a listener who does not understand that language (Irish) appreciate that song as anything other than a 'nice sound' - presuming, of course, that it has been sung skillfully enough?
Best,
Jim

My reply:

Good heavens I hope so. Anecdotal evidence in favor:

I grew up in the States and started learning Irish a decade ago. Fully fluent is pushing it but I have good conversational ability. I sing with a small group (just 3 of us). We do songs in Irish, Scottish, Manx, Welsh, Cornish and Breton. For years we've sung Griogal Cridh' - mostly to American audiences who have no knowledge of Scottish. We sang a set including that song at a small intimate dinner a few years back where we weren't introducing the songs at all. Later in the evening a woman came to talk to us asking to tell her about "that song." With a bit of singing partial lines we realized she meant Griogal. She had no Scottish (or Irish, etc) and had never heard it before but understood easily that it was a strong lament, and it had reduced her to tears.

I like to think we do justice to that song and many others, and I know that, while it's a different experience than listening to a song in your own language, people can have a deeper experience than thinking they've heard a "nice sound."

Music is it's own language and any song sung is really in two languages - the language of the music and that of the words. None of us would argue that instrumental pieces can draw out emotion, but I think there is an extra element when lyrics are sung. The human voice can convey quite a lot, even if it isn't a Babel fish.

Respectfully,

Elizabeth

I'm fearful of the responses devolving into a tradition/purist snipe-fest, but if they don't it could come to be an interesting set of posts to have around - hopefully good for all of us who didn't grow up in the Gaeltacht.

Dark Nights

2006-03-01T11:11:00.000-06:00

It's into full swing now for Kanopy tech week (well, that would be tech night, dress night, opening night through 5 shows), so my posts will probably be a bit more sporadic even than usual. Or maybe there will be lots of them but they'll all be short and odd. You'll just have to keep an eye on your RSS feed to find out!

The show is called Dark Nights. Appropriate for the show and the time we get out of the theater at night. Actually pretty good for the time get into the theater at night! It's all rock music played on cellos but don't be afraid if you don't like old heavy metal - the melodies are beautiful and cellos really bring them out.

This morning was a great cool theater ghosts experience: I got to the theater a little before 10. We knew it would be open and had planned a short class/show tweaking session. The room was empty with low lights on when I came in. No sign of anyone. No worries, I was a bit early (which in Kanopy terms means I didn't sleep in nearly long enough). I came into this lovely peaceful room - beautiful wood and a big empty stage. And just as I set my bag down on the floor I hear just a few notes, very quiet. I realize what I'm hearing is the start of a piece from the second part of the show (windows media file from Amazon). But who started it? Where did it come from? Everything was dark in the control rooms, so I just hung out with the ghosts for about half an hour. Very cool way to start a day.

Off to pack up a bag full of little portable snacks... hot spicy V8 anyone?

a tank full of guppies

2006-02-23T20:52:00.000-06:00

Last night I went with C to see the New Pornographers at the Barrymore. It was supposed to be three of us but unfortunately A was swamped so we had a spare ticket. The show was a make-up from last October when they had to cancel due to one of the band members having his appendix "explode in anticipation" as they described it last night. The fact that it was a make-up, and the fact that they're just cool meant that the show was sold out. C & I arrived after the doors were opened and there were a few people standing around outside but on a short glance I thought they were just smokers (ah, happy current Madison legislation). I walked up to the door and turned around and asked if anyone needed a ticket and it was like opening up a fish tank when the fish are starving.

The show was fabulous. I was prepared to be mostly really impressed by them, but only mostly since Neko Case wasn't with them. I am not a longtime fan of either Neko or the NP but I'm taken with her voice, and liked some of what I've heard of NP. Turns out I was totally impressed. Kathryn Calder was doing (a fabulous job with) the vocal lines Neko usually has, and out of 6 people on stage 4 had vocal mics (most often being used simultaneously). The really impressive thing though was to see how tight they were on stage. So together. So rehearsed. So easy going and powerful. The played strong live versions of most of Twin Cinema (including a great more energetic version of Streets of Fire than the one on CD), a very cool Testament to Youth in Verse & The Laws Have Changed from EV, and a standout The Body Says No (or maybe I just like that song). Yes I looked up all of that songX on albumY bit because even though I recognized lots, no, I couldn't have told you a song name yesterday. I'm fully converted.

The other yay surprise for the evening was the opening music. I didn't go in so much for the first act but the second act (self-labeled "meat in an awesome rock sandwich") was a group I'd heard about a while back and meant to look up but then forgot about. Hate it when that happens. But thanks to A so wanting to see this show (poor fellow) I found them again - Matt Pond PA. Go! Find. Contented mellow-rhythmic-melodic indie with a very engaging voice. Happy. I bought a CD. I can't remember the last time I bought a real CD. I've gone totally digital lately but I love the feeling of selling a CD at a show - it feels like such direct appreciation. So I own it. Of course I ripped it within minutes of arriving home. :-)

mmm, soft curvy silicone

2006-02-20T20:05:00.000-06:00

Score one for smart design. My dream is a day when wireless is totally ubiquitous. I mean everything - data transfer, headphones, powercables, audio connections - for every piece of equipment I own. Not there yet, obviously (that wireless power transfer will be the cool one). In the meantime, if you have to have cords: Smartwraps & Syncwraps are my next favorite silicone product - I'd gotten stuck in kitchens for a while. Isn't it nice that we can all talk about silicone now without...

(If any of you local types decide this is a must have and make plans to order one or a few let me know and I'll split shipping with you!)

Tonight for dinner I had one of my most favorite weird foods: purple basil jelly. Mmmm. French bread with honey goat cheese & purple basil jelly. I was totally dubious the first time I saw the stuff.

Winter!

2006-02-19T15:34:00.000-06:00

Last night we went sledding with Todd & Erin at the park just over the hill behind the church across the street (whew!). It's a great sledding hill - one big woomp in the middle to go flying over, and then it bottoms out at the very frozen lake. Some people had built a little jump over to the right, but since there's an enormous beautiful tree just at the lake shore beyond the jump we stuck to the open streak on the left. Besides there was another group using the classic cardboard-box-sides-as-snowboards trying to go over the jump (they couldn't get enough momentum going to have the tree be any danger).

After the usual four hour Saturday rehearsal at Kanopy yesterday morning, and the very cold walk to get there after missing my bus, I thought I had really probably worn myself out enough for one day (it takes a lot of energy to descend into total insanity twice). But of course little local sledding hills aren't as well-endowed as Elver Park where I went sledding every winter when we first moved to Madison as a little kid. At Elver we had a tow rope. I remember this especially for one time when I was getting myself dragged up the tow rope and lost my feet and ended up with my chin sliding over said rope. Nasty rope burn! But of course we had no tow rope last night so it was headed toward another full decent into insanity until we abandoned for Jolly Bob's. Nothing like sledding and Caribbean cocktails to make a perfect winter day.

dragons make everything better

2006-02-16T17:12:00.000-06:00

My plan here is to rave happily about commercials. This fact alone should confuse you. I detest commercials. Not seeing a lot of ads (read, not watching much TV at all) is part of how I keep my sanity. Most advertising doesn't have any respect for the person seeing the ad, as witnessed by the use of phrases like "big sale," "no payments for X," "special," and "best ever," and the depressing scream-at-people-long-enough-and-they'll-buy-your-stuff attitude.

This sort of thing is the only thing that makes me tire watching the Olympics. If it was just sports coverage I'd be sunk, happily settled into my couch. But with all the ad breaks I start to get a feeling of not having nearly enough silence around me. Too much input. But I promised happy raving and haven't gotten there yet so here goes:

There is a beautiful commercial from United Airlines playing during the Olympic coverage. I've had some travel issues with United. Lots of them actually. So an add that makes me feel contented about that company is impressive. It's a stop-animation piece of a little kid dreaming about what his dad is doing while he's gone on a business trip. United has both the commercial and a making-of short movie available on their site. The 'making of' bit is worth all of its 6 or 7 minutes. Jamie Caliri, who directed it, is the kind of person I love working with (not that I get to work with him) - totally in love with what he does. It also turns out he's the same person who did the fabulous closing sequences for "A Series of Unfortunate Events."

There's still too much in the way of life-sucking commercials, but things like this are a big dose of clear air and sunshine.

more keyboard (heaven?)

2006-02-15T21:19:00.000-06:00

This one is 180 degrees off of the last keyboard I posted about - your grandmother's keyboard so to speak.

The description from the designer:

"This retro decorative tablecloth contains a textile keyboard. The electronic is woven into a fabric, which finds itself between layers of water resistant felt as sandwich material. The TIDY TIPIST NO.2 is washable."

Such a great concept. (Ergonomics? Who knows...) I think it's something related to the way it looks funny to see things like fabric or crumpled sheets of notebook paper on a computer monitor. My next design reminder:

"Things don't need to look modern to be new and innovative."

I suppose this is officially DesignReminder #2. For the unlabelled DesignReminder #1 see Image Interpretations.

This snowstorm is beautiful. I've enjoyed the warm but I miss the big beautiful snows too. Of course the last time we had a big snow my bus home took more than an hour (usually about 20 minutes). Today at work they sent out all the administrative emails about what you're supposed to do if you decide it's not safe for you to travel to work. But I'll stick with the beauty thoughts for now.

snif

2006-02-13T22:25:00.000-06:00

It's official - I have the current "thing" ...stomach, throat, sniffles, sleepy. I didn't realize it was a thing until today when I found someone else who has the same "thing." Time to take a cue from Fionn who is currently snoozing on the back of the couch.

A bit of beauty:

This is a small bit out of a beautiful collection of pictures

(found thanks to BLDGBLOG)

high resolution Torino

2006-02-12T10:21:00.000-06:00

If you haven't developed an addiction to Google Earth yet, this should pull you in. A few days ago Google added high resolution imagery around Torino along with a detailed road network. The Official Google Blog has the link to the Google Earth file with all of the venues marked. I spent a while last night panning around and tilting to see the mountains.

Today is International Fest and Navan has a set there mid-afternoon. Until then I'm planning to hang out with a lot of tea and see if I can start into this very small knitting project I found last weekend when Adam and I went for a drive in the country and found ourselves at the Sow's Ear. Considering I haven't done this in a while it may end up more of an entertainment for Fionn.

Side rant:

I can't believe that NBC is showing the Nascar qualifying race for 2 hours today when it would normally be doing Olympic coverage. That should be part of the deal for winning the Olympic contract: any non-Olympic sporting events normally broadcast by the network should be redistributed to other networks during the two week span of the Olympics. Gr!

Jim = Fred?

2006-02-11T16:29:00.000-06:00

I'm fascinated by Jim Lampley. Apparently he's done Olympic coverage in quite a few previous Olympics but he didn't stick with me, and I just don't watch enough boxing to know. If I only listen to his voice I totally understand why he's in broadcasting. And I suppose he's the perfect picture of a talking head, but there's just something odd. He most reminds me of Mike LaFontaine (Fred Willard) from A Mighty Wind (Not there yet? If you've seen it, "Wha' Happened?" should do it for you.) It's something in the cut of his face and the over zealous jaw work.

Yes?

This is an older picture of Jim, but for this Olympics he has a very coiffed thing going on in a salt and pepper that is so perfect it looks like they dyed in both the dark and the grey bits. When he had on a pinstripe suit for the opening ceremonies commentary last night it was a bit too much - sort of a stripey zoo animal from top to waist! He was wisely in plain dark grey this afternoon.

Found a few great mapping bits this afternoon but I'll get around to those another time. For now it's back to watching the end of Il Postino :-)

Tags:

olympics

non-meme-ing

2006-02-10T17:56:00.000-06:00

I feel after two meme-ish posts some real content is in order. In a little over an hour the NBC coverage of the Olympics starts and I've caved completely. I can go for months without seeing something on broadcast TV (excluding the games we have people over for now and again, a happy social symptom of having a projector) but I can easily predict that the next two weeks will be total abandonment of that lifestyle. I like all the sappy human interest stories. I like the pop music transitions as the broadcast skips between events. I like the glory. I love the athleticism. It's just rare to get to watch so many people all at the top of their game - focused on this one point in their life for years.

In local life, Kanopy has the entire next show choreographed and just in need of cleaning and lots of runs - and the shows are three weeks away. This feels like a fabulous gift - a very comfortable position. I really like how this show is coming together, and it feels good to dance. It's interesting to see how much it all hangs together considering there are 6 choreographers for various songs in the evening-length work.

Last night Navan tested out a new studio. Apparently this is a comfortable week for arts - we had a good test. It was easy to sing there and the rough mix down sounded good. It's a bit pricier than we were hoping for, but we'll see what we decide. In the unexpected break from recording we've sorted out a few more arrangements for things we were planning for the album.

A short correction: When I chatted a good few posts back about Olympic design I used Turin instead of Torino. This is a personal pet peeve of mine (is 'personal' redundant there?) - Places get renamed in other languages for no good reason. I know it's sometimes for ease of pronunciation, or because the original language uses a different alphabet. But it happens too often for no good reason. Classic example: Hannover in Germany, Hanover (when referring to the German city) in the US. Oy. So, up Torino!

Fionn has taken up his usual "your fingers are paying too much attention to that keyboard" position across my forearms so I think I'll quit for now, give him a bit of attention, and take a shower before the opening ceremonies start!

I'm a bit slow...

2006-02-10T17:39:00.000-06:00

I'm not always so quick to cop on, as witnessed by my ignorance of having been tagged by Candy for the 4things meme.

Back to the OED: meme - A cultural element or behavioural trait whose transmission and consequent persistence in a population, although occurring by non-genetic means (esp. imitation), is considered as analogous to the inheritance of a gene. Word made up by Richard Dawkins in 1976. You're in good company, Candy.

Four jobs you have had in your life:
1. CD store (how to define... in a small music shop you do it all... sell, restock, clean)
2. waitress at a Pizzeria Uno
3. database designer on a statewide radon monitoring project
4. web & graphic designer

Four movies you would watch over and over:
1. LOTR (how's that for the obvious answer?)
2. Harry Potter - these are like comfort food... perfect if sick or snoozy
3. The Never-Ending Story (first movie I ever saw in a theatre - the Al Ringling Theatre!)
4. Braveheart
(I'm sure I'll think of the other one's I meant to list later...)

Four places you have lived:
1. Madison, WI
2. Dublin, Ireland
3. Hannover, Germany
4. Boston, MA

Four TV shows you watch:
Not so much with the TV watching, but we definitely get shows from NetFlix... but then they sort of feel more like short movies, so here are the ones we've gotten this year
1. Deadwood
2. Firefly
3. Millennium
4. Six Feet Under

(And as much of the Olympics as I can catch, but that hardly counts as a show - more like a portal in the TV. I should probably also admit to my 1st season addiction to Project Runway.)

Four places you have been on vacation
1. Donegal
2. northern corner of France
3. Italy
4. Sanibel Island

Four websites you visit daily:
1. NYTimes
2. BLDG BLOG
3. Delicious Days
4. Jumping at the Ground and Missing

Four favourite foods:
1. chocolate chip cookies (but only the ones from the recipe I grew up on)
2. fresh summer garden tomatoes
3. poached salmon
4. basted eggs on toast

Four places I would rather be right now:
1. Donegal
2. Sienna
3. a warm island (what can I say, it's winter in Wisconsin)
4. anywhere outside of a city (forest, meadow, river, mountain, grass, canoe, trail)

Four bloggers I am tagging:
1. Wee Beasties (maybe 2 tags will get her, huh Candy?)
2. Grand Marnier (but I think she got swallowed by school)
3. the secret blogger (you know who you are!)
4. oy - anyone else out there I know have a blog going?

Elizabeth looks like...

2006-02-04T16:37:00.000-06:00

What better post to do while doing laundry with a free wireless connection. I had thought of continuing with the redesign of the Navan site into CSS (seriously old school web site we have there at the moment) but this was too tempting once I started seeing the list form. Thanks to Candy (backlink coming once I can find it again) for this diversion: Google "so-and-so looks like" to discover things you never knew but always suspected about yourself.

Elizabeth looks like:

...she could be a poker babe. (oy, what a start)
...she's about to pass out from a combination of the heat and being unable to breathe because of her corset. (2 pts for anyone who can name that reference (not in my life) without the aid of a search engine - honor system only, and 3 for anyone who can relate it directly to my life)
..who wants to fall through any opening in the floor she can find, even if it sends her to the circle of Hell where... (yikes!)
..an etching of Geronimo.
...a stunned rabbit.
...a cadavre (sic), more dead than alive. (I think I liked the rabbit better.)
...she knows she's being difficult.
...a donut (excellent on its own or with the rest of the quote: because she has been around for so long and is coated in sugar as a means of self-preservation. HA!)
..she will be smiling a lot. :-)
...she is performing.
...she may pee standing up on a bad day. (I wonder what it is about the bad day that makes that a necessity.)
...she could conquer most nineties guys before breakfast. (HA!)

So there you are, a small bit of mindless (google-brained?) amusement for you. I'll have to work on pulling the attitude to go with that last one, but I'm afraid I'll end up looking more like the one after Geronimo.

But then again, color has its advantages...

2006-02-03T08:01:00.000-06:00

I shot this a few years back now and it's been far too long since I've seen the sight

Edit at 5:04pm: Picture & homonym troubles fixed.
-E

wallowing in black and white

2006-02-01T18:35:00.000-06:00

For a few issues now I've been wallowing in a free subscription to Paste Magazine. One of my favorite things in it so far was a half a page devoted to an image of a crunched-flattened-scribbled piece of notebook paper where the columnist wrote lists in 4 sections - things I like that I'm not supposed to like, things I don't like that I'm supposed to like, things I don't like that I'm not supposed to like, and things I like that I'm supposed to like. It was a nice nod to that recognized social consciousness. We probably all have things that are things we adore that we know we can't go on at length about around other people because we don't want to have to explain, and likewise times where we listen to people talk about something with great praise when we're basically unimpressed. I've been in conversations like that about black and white film - still or video, take your pick. It gets tagged as being an artists way of making something seem arty. I can't help it - I adore it. I like the simplification of removing color. (Easier on the viewer, harder on the designer though.)

Last night we watched Pi. The film is done in black and white and definitely could get tagged for pretension (if you haven't seen it, it focuses on a high-level math possible genius/nutter and his quest for making sense of patterns in the world). The filming is gritty with jerky camera work and people/freight trains appearing and disappearing as the mental state of the lead swings about. But I can't imagine it being as enticing in color.

keyboard heaven

2006-02-01T08:59:00.000-06:00

For anyone who has ever forgotten a keyboard shortcut help is on the way - at least eventually. Thanks Paul for reminding me of this, the coolest keyboard advance I have seen since testing the laser keyboard at CEBIT a few years back when it was just a prototype.

The laser keyboard was weird - typing on a table is a very strange feeling, and if you don't keep your eyes on the keys aeahgila; gfhsls fhel, sga Flah!

The basic concept of the Optimus keyboard is that you can have the actual functions of the keys on the keys (look closely at the image to the left here). This would be excellent for a design junkie (hello & thank you very much) who has probably only ever regularly used MAYBE 1/3 of the keyboard shortcuts while in the various Adobe lands. You can switch keyboard layouts between Multiple programs (that's what the first image top left is showing). Not bad for speech transcriptionists either, I'd think.

[via Engadget]

bloggrrr.

2006-01-31T20:09:00.000-06:00

I just wrote a nice long post. Blogger choked and it has evaporated. I will attempt to rewrite tomorrow. Grr.

carp and stereotypes

2006-01-29T20:08:00.000-06:00

This weekend Navan sang for a Burns Dinner. We have ended up at a few of these over the years and they are one of places where we get a straight dose of one Celtic country as far as the origins of the people who attend. This makes it easy to start stereotyping, but now we can turn to Google to make sure we really know what we're talking about. Enter the prejudice map. (Yes the links really do work the way the author meant them to work - I would have given you a direct link if one existed.) And if you haven't crossed a Burns Dinner before you now have the formula to learn more.

This week has been a week of carping. Well, just Friday mostly when I woke up half an hour late and was running full tilt from 7am until 1:30am when we got back from said Burns Dinner, and all three of my meals for the day went weird (carp, carp). Just last week the Washington Post had to shut down comments on their blog because people were being too nasty and vicious, and David Pogue at the NYTimes sent out his weekly tech newsletter on the topic of internet jerks, largely in response to the nasty emails he receives. (sorry - I think that link won't work after his next column comes out) His best find was this from Benjamin Franklin in 1750 - people haven't changed so much with the coming of the intranet. It's just that we all have easier access to each other.

Interesting in light of all this that carp comes from Old Norse "karpa" meaning to boast. The primary annoying thing about people who carp at/about other people is that they assume they know more and that you are clearly wrong. Seems obvious now, but I'd never connected the two words before.

fast flute bits

2006-01-25T17:24:00.001-06:00

Today I came home to find a USPS 2nd delivery attempt slip in our mailbox (did they skip leaving the slip for their first attempt?). I could barely make out the name of the sender but it looked something like "ooter" which I figured might be "Cotter."

Cotter would be Eamonn Cotter who made the wooden flute I bought a few years ago. (If you missed the first part of the story, which would be easy considering it started before my blog did, I opened my flute case in mid-December to find that the barrel had cracked. Good solid nasty crack. Wooden flutes shouldn't live in Wisconsin when they were born in a climate with permanent 66.6% humidity.) The back of the slip said the package would be held at 702 E Wash (all of 5 blocks from the house) and that I could pick it up the day after delivery.

They had a phone number listed with the address that was some version of 1-800-get-usps. Those are never helpful numbers unless you have a tracking number and plenty of time to kill waiting through the menus and hold music. I should also mention that it said the hours at 70 E Wash were from 10am to 5pm. My clock said 4:42. It was also the same day as the attempted delivery. But I'm stubborn like that so I found a local number for them and called.

There were some delivery troubles on the Irish end when I sent the head joint for repair/replacement, and this morning I called FedEx again to see if they'd managed to get it to him finally. I've just finished blasting out my first proper tunes in a month. Nice change in 12 hours :-)

The flute is now living in its case, in plastic box with a damp rag. And I'm planning to acquire one of these:

It's 1 3/4" in diameter, and only costs $6.99. We're so used to seeing all these digital things now, but analog can be cheap and beautiful.

Blogging gets difficult with a cat like Fionn. He's adorable but he likes to sit on my lap, where the laptop is supposedly perched, and he likes to nudge his face into my hands, which disables my typing abilities somewhat. At the moment we have a decent truce worked out - he's laying sideways with his chest, front paws, and head flopped over my right wrist. Probably not so good for carpal tunnel.

PS - I can't believe the Blogger spellchecker doesn't know the words "blog" and "blogging" - official oversight!

Kiss all our Moon-Pies goodbye

2006-01-23T16:21:00.000-06:00

Something for linguists and junk food junkies alike:

My good laugh for today.. and it made it perfect that I'm having my little Oreos & tea break here at work while I read it. Good deal to be getting laughs out of New Orleans at the moment - thanks, Noah.

Have We Gone All Tutti-Frutti? - from Chris Rose at the Times Picayune

Fellini and Garrison Keillor

2006-01-20T08:45:00.000-06:00

Somewhat different public personae, but maybe today we learn that just a shade behind the public persona Garrison is even more appreciative of Fellini. This morning on Writer's Almanac Garrison noted that Fellini was born today and gave us the quote:

"You can't teach old fleas new dogs."

In this form the quote seems a quaint little switch up of the standard. But Garrison was excerpting from the full quote (down in the "more" section, or search on fleas) And perhaps he couldn't have put the whole deal on NPR (at least not without Audience Services getting an earful).

Apparently staying home from dance class with a cold is good for blogging. Fingers working better than the whole body...

Whale watching in London - go now!

2006-01-20T08:01:00.001-06:00

Today finds a whale who has wandered up the river Thames. The BBC article has a link to live (yes, live) video coverage. The camera work seems a bit random without commentary, but yes, the dark blob in the middle of the water now and again really is a Northern Bottle-Nosed whale. I saw it cruise fairly fast up the river at one point. They're hoping it will find its own way out with the retreating tide.

8:40 am update: Not so much live anymore, but there's still a news video. They're leaving a live link in the sidebar which just takes you to a BBC hold screen (live with a clock). This leads me to think they might get back to it if the BBC helicopter doesn't have anything going later on. Of course it'll be dark there before too long as well I suppose.

the end of the world?

2006-01-19T10:36:00.000-06:00

Last night we watched The Day After Tomorrow which was totally enjoyable for what it was (a big disaster movie with some impressive effects). I'm convinced that a home projector setup is the only real way to watch movies like this. On a small screen the massive destruction looks too small, and in a theater you can't heckle loudly... well, you can, but I don't. In any case it's the heckling that makes these movies truly enjoyable. And it had Jake Gyllenhaal and Emmy Rossum (who has charmed me entirely ever since Songcatcher).

And then today on BBC news we get this related story. If you happen to be a grad student who feels sorry for your current plight in life now and again, check the 'Volunteers Army' section of the article. I promise you'll feel better!

Coffee break over...

Geeking out

2006-01-17T17:12:00.000-06:00

A few of my favorite additions to my Treo 650 (in case you're still monkeying with yours, Woody):

Treo Allegro (v0.2): This is the one that lets you have an LED that's actually good for something. I have mine set to show red when there's new voicemail, and orange when there's a new text message. You can also control a few other things like having the LCD be dimmer during the day to save power, but it's the LED fix that does it for me. And it's FREE

KeyCaps: Allows you to never again touch the shift and option keys - you can set it up with a few options but I have it set so a quick tap gives me lowercase, holding gives me upper case and longer holding swaps all the way through to the option (punctuation, number). Also FREE.

Dragon Character Training: free program to learn chinese characters

EWallet - password protected anything you want

Collins dictionaries - have saved me in multiple languages

And if you have a big data plan and an audiobook addiction-waiting-to-happen:

Audible & AudibleAir

Tags:

treo

contented words

2006-01-16T19:54:00.000-06:00

"The grill-room clock struck eleven with the respectful unobtrusiveness of one whose mission in life is to be ignored."

This week I was introduced to Saki, a writer I had entirely missed up to now. I've only just started making my way through the collection of his stories available through Project Gutenberg, so I'm not sure how his observations will sit in the long run, but I'm quite taken with his way of tucking words together. I'm not much one for ebooks - too much screen reading is no good, but for short stories it's not bad... just munch through one now and again.

While I was sitting here typing away I looked over to the couch and saw Adam and Fionn looking entirely similar - both gently asleep (in that easily woken but totally relaxed sense) with limbs flopped out. Fionn had settled on the back of the couch just above where Adam dozed. From there my mind wandered to the fact that the construction "like A, like B" is only ever used with singular categories... like mother, like daughter. This is a case of "like human, like cat" I suppose, if I stick with the proverbial sense. But what do you do with individuals? It's not a categorical statement that cats are often like their nearby humans. I'm sure someone who studied English instead of maps could fill me in.

Lacking that at the moment I go to my favorite thing about being connected with the University (aside from things like free bus passes and health insurance and all that) - free access to the online OED! If I wanted in on my own it would be a whopping $295/year (in other words, I wouldn't have it). Yay for a big research University! In this case it doesn't help me much except to learn that the construction was first documented in 1598.

Yes, this will be a place of seriously random bits of probably not very useful knowledge.

Tags:

language

image interpretation

2006-01-12T18:28:00.000-06:00

I'm getting all excited about the Olympics (as usual). They're great for all sorts of reasons - impressive athletics, heartbreak that doesn't actually do you any damage, international intrigue that doesn't revolve around war, interesting architecture as each city tries to make itself worthy, technology (torch design for a start, more on that in a minute) and graphic design - my key interest in things today.

Turin 2006 Olympic emblem is this:

Emblems and icons and other minimalist-but-full-of-meaning images are faced with a host of problems before they even get started, especially when you have people from every culture imaginable eyeing your image. They claim that the "emblem portrays the unmistakable silhouette of the Mole Antonelliana. It is transformed into a mountain, among crystals of ice, where the white snow meets the blue sky. The crystals come together to form a web: the web of new technologies and the eternal Olympic spirit of communion among peoples."

Never having been to Turin I wondered what this Mole Antonelliana looks like and discovered this:

Interesting, I thought, because what the emblem most reminds me of (especially growing up in Wisconsin, and having visions of snow running in my head) is this:

Now, I admit the shape isn't right, but you have to imagine this snowfence at the end of the winter when it's been battered back and forth by blizzards and plows and any other manner of things. It looks fairly twisted, and not entirely unlike the Turin 2006 emblem. But orange.

All that said, I like the lines of it and still find it quite pleasing. It just reminds me that I can never take for granted what someone else will see in one of my designs.

Which brings us to the mascots. Meet Neve and Gliz:

What's your first thought? Me, I saw marshmallows. But it turns out that they are an "elegant snowball" and a "lively, playful ice cube." They're cute enough though, and are fairly charming in the video (go there and it's right at the top of the page.). The concept of mascots started in 1968 with Schuss, the skiing man from Grenoble (oy) and has wobbled on. Given that I don't recognize any of them I have to say that designs have been fairly weak all along. Beijing 2008 has also unveiled their plans - altogether more interesting inspirations (Tibetan antelope anyone?)

And torches, because I had no idea what all was involved:

"It cannot be re-lit and it must not go out even in bad weather conditions such as rain, snow and wind.

The flame of each torch, which burns for 15 minutes, must not be higher than 10 centimetres. As for the materials used, the outside shell is made of aluminium; the inside fittings are of steel, copper and techno-polymers, and for the surface finish, a special paint is used that is resistant to high temperatures."

(Again from olympics.org)

Cool.

Tags:

yours, mine, definitely not really proprietary I suppose

2006-01-11T13:08:00.000-06:00

This is an update to 'Too many cool things at once' - apparently it was too many for me to really sort out what was going on. (Meaning I just googled on concept and found the not so ready to use implementation.) If you liked the sound of mygmap, have a look at YourGmap for one that has some semblance of an interface!

made up languages and audiobooks

2006-01-10T20:42:00.000-06:00

Post separation for topic sanity...

I've transformed into an audiobook junkie over the period of the last 5 years or so. It's partly as a result of long drives to gigs with Navan. An audiobook makes 11 hours in an 8x10 moving space much better, and it rips your throat up less than taking turns reading aloud (which we did with Bonfire of the Vanities on the way out the South Dakota years ago, leading to a number of very funny moments with Paul waking extremely shocked and confused from a dead sleep when the one of us reading would launch into one of the many loud swearing fests written into that book). In addition to making long trips better, audiobooks are also great for language upkeep or learning. I got into listening to Harry Potter und der Stein der Weisen when I was trying to get my German functional. But it gets a bit sketchier when the language in question is created by the author.

Case in point: If you've noticed my audiobook sidebar, you've seen that I've been listening to Eragon, which has a good dose of created language in it. The problem is that I only know these things by sound and I realized most of the way through the book that I have no idea what these words look like. In a real language that's all well and good. There are plenty of arguments for learning by ear. But with a language that only exists in printed form it's a bit odd to never see the print. Internet to the rescue, as usual.

And just because I'm always happier with maps, there's also this.

too many cool things at once

2006-01-10T20:20:00.000-06:00

I just got home from a Weary Mappers evening and heard about all kinds of fascinating new little things. The best for a start is the still very alpha MyGmaps where you can "create, save and host custom data files and display them with Google Maps" which in real language means that you can make custom maps with up to 10 locations each and host them there for other people to find. It's a small concept for now, but with excellent possibilities like GeoPhotoBlogging where you could provide coordinates for all your trip photos in Picasa and upload them to your gmap with comments and a travel route.

Another twist in the geo-information land is Dodgeball.com. I can't decide if this is cool or just slightly too creepy. It's now available in 22 cities including Madison (and New Orleans where it officially qualifies as cool these days - hang with me - you'll understand why shortly). The concept is that you register on the site and your friends register on the site and then if you're out at your favorite bar/club/park/whatever you can send a text message to the website which will then in turn send messages to your friends saying "Elizabeth is at the Brocach. Why not stop by and say hello?" and then it goes a step further and does the whole social network thing. I have friends, and they have friends, so if I send a text from the Brocach to dodgeball.com it notifies my friends and then notifies my friends' friends with a similar message but it has a tag at the end that says "You know Elizabeth through so-and-so." This is where I start thinking creepy. There's also a whole thing with being able to tag crushes, and get notified when a crush is within 10 blocks if you both happen to text the site, so all your evenings can be like high school hallways. (yack)

I've realized I need to sort out a good way to tag my posts... it could actually be handy ages from now to be able to pull all the geography posts or all the dance posts etc.

digital ink

2006-01-10T08:03:00.000-06:00

Here you go, Todd - digital ink for the future. I remember news of this coming out as a technical possibility back about 3 or 4 years ago, and then last year they finally came out with this prototype. The main company trying to make a living off of the concept is E*Ink which has some very cool looking things starting to come out. This is one of those concepts that will make all sorts of other things possible eventually even though the initial things being produced aren't particularly revolutionary. Just yesterday the Weather Wizard was blogged on engadget. I suppose they would be more impressive in person where you could flex the material and be impressed by the luminosity (they really like that word). But I'm still hanging in there because when it does come around... just think - full size classroom wall maps that can be edited by the company that produced them, and they just update on the wall!

scientific telling of tales (or at least serifs)

2006-01-05T08:43:00.000-06:00

Something to get back to later when I'm not supposed to be doing other things (I'll let you know how it comes out):

handwriting.feedbucket.com

What better combination of art and science could there be? The question is, which of my various bits of handwriting do I use? The one when I'm tired and scribbling, the one when I'm carefully writing a card to someone, or the slanty one I fall ino sometimes?

Now that I take a closer look at the page, I'm supposed to mouse in my signature - I may have to pull out the old pen tablet I got cheap at CEBIT a few years back to try this thing.

Thoughts for the future

2005-12-05T16:51:00.000-06:00

A few things you'll likely find in this page once I start rambling:

celtic song (Navan)
database & web programming (MySQL, php, etc)
modern dance
cartography
intelligent design (no, not that one, the one that makes you be able to open a door right on the first try)
wooden flute and various other instruments
jewelry-making
knitting (ok, that one is a stretch as I only did a short stint of it leading up to Christmas 2004)
ginger tea