The Book of Merle

slow news day

2008-07-24T21:43:33Z

On the bathroom floor at work was a section of a newspaper claiming, in enormous print, "Dangerous Turns Deadly".

At first parse this clearly meant that something considered dangerous had become deadly as well. Uhm.. yes. In my mind, most dangerous physical things are so considered because you might die from them. Sure, stapling your finger is not likely to cause death, but it could: hence the danger part.

Then I flipped the paper over to see what section it was. Sports. Oh: they meant that dangerous turns on race courses might be deadly. That seems even more obvious.

I am led to wonder what an exciting report from the world of sports might be like. "Outfielder Catches Ball", or perhaps "Sports Fan Finds Shiny Penny On Floor".

unfortunate names

2008-07-20T21:31:50Z

One of the curators at the SF Asian Art Museum is named Michael Knight.

He seems old enough not to have been named after the character, but young enough that in the 80s he must have had some very frustrating encounters at parties.

"Hi, what's your name?"
"I'm Michael Knight."
"Uh huh, and I'm Daffy Duck. See you -- hopefully not."

If only he would perm his hair and trim his beard down to just a small triangular goatee...

please pardon the phrasing

2008-07-20T19:32:01Z

Having proactively used up all of my Ps for the day, I have practically pigeonholed myself into not being able to produce my political platform for my potential presidency. Polevaulting, this isn't producing a pertinent post. Perhaps I could borrow from Peter to pay Paul.. no, that's a conservation of Ps. A pretty platform, but predictable. Perchance profits from my prescient investments will provide for more Ps? Pshaw, it is probably pointless to proceed. What a pickle.

Time for a pregnant pause.

This pitiful presentation was provided to the public by the letters P, Φ, and Ψ, and the number π.

youtube

2008-07-20T19:11:44Z

For a long time, I dissed Youtube because every use of it I saw was sad. It was either used for "funny" videos too scary for even America's Funniest Home Videos, or for extremely lo-fi pirated content. Or for porn, I assume, porn being perniciously pervasive and popular. (there goes my quota of Ps for the day)

There is another use of it, though, which seems to be moderately popular and quite creative: remade music videos. Not the originals, but music videos incorporating clips from some show or movie. It is a sort of dual-fandom: like the music, like some show, combine the two into a music video. And it is surprisingly good. Amateur at times, but at other times quite good.

The first one I was introduced to was clips from the "Utopia" trilogy from the new Doctor Who, which was excellent, and did not spoil the episodes at all (clips being presented far out of order or context) -- but sadly it has disappeared. The closest I can find to it now is this more spoilery one. The most recent I came across while looking for an older song, "Edge of Seventeen" done with Final Fantasy clips. There is some obvious repetition of clips in the latter, but many parts of it are quite well done.

This is not a new form of art, of course. But one of the things that makes art, music, literature, and the like interesting is the interaction people have with it and what they get out of it. The easy distribution network has made it much easier to share this particular way of combining things, and often I can find a video that provides an interesting interpretation. Some are actually better than the original videos...

the horn alarms of punching

2008-07-19T19:48:11Z

Could we please pass a law outlawing hooking up a car's alarm system to the horn? I would say "especially for those rugby players who drive six ton Hummers, install a system that has to honk several times to indicate state, and who always seem to arm or disarm it from thirty feet away right when I am next to the car", but really it should apply for everyone.

Should I be elected president, one of the laws I will push through is that if you are near someone who activates or deactivates such a horn-based alarm, you have the right to punch them. Just once, but feel free to hit as hard as you like. Police, of course, would be allowed the choice of using a taser or writing them a $500 ticket for disturbing the peace. If the horn alarm goes off and they do not deactivate it within ten minutes, the fine goes up an additional $100 per minute.

Vote for me! Vote often!

the silence of the weather

2008-07-18T14:32:30Z

The local Fox weatherman sometimes uses bizarre terms for what the weather will be like. The current winner, though, is that in the middle of next week it will be "quiet - nice" in this area.

I wonder what quiet weather is. Perhaps some low pressure system that dampens all noise? Whatever it is, I look forward to it being quiet next week.

random minor peeve of the day

2008-07-18T13:45:33Z

Every medium to large technology company that exists for long enough seems to go through a a variety of IT policies concerning how email addresses are constructed. (this may also be true for non-tech companies, I do not know) They start out using (first name), then shift to either (first initial)(last name) or (first name)(last initial), followed by the other variant. When the time comes that there are overlaps, either a sequence number is appended, or the initial becomes the first two letters -- but only for the newcomer.

People being people, they like their old address and want to hang onto it. In the end there is a wild mixture of all variants, meaning you really cannot guess someone's address, machine name, or what not, without knowing which IT person set their account up and when. Information not readily available. So effectively you have to learn two names for everyone.

I understand that forcing people to change suddenly may mean they lose contacts outside the company, but that does not make it less annoying.

stop jerking me around

2008-07-16T20:00:39Z

A new gym opened up along my way to work. They have an interesting method of advertising, which means every time I walk by I am greeted by a big sign that reads:

CRUNCH
EVERYONE'S WELCOME
...EXCEPT FOR JERKS

It is sometimes tempting to go in, get all the way through the application process up to the point where I have to hand them a credit card, step back, and say "no, wait, I can't apply, since I'm a jerk!".

three pilots and a plane

2008-07-14T00:27:59Z

The pilot for the US version of Life on Mars was.. well, tolerable. I guess. It had none of the "am I in a coma or time travelled" angst, little period music, and generally wasn't as good. This version. From what I hear they're remaking it, basing it in a different city with different actors, so who knows how the actual broadcast pilot will turn out? Still, I would rather watch the original British version.

The pilot for Fringe was not so good. The main character took unacceptable risks for someone she didn't know all that well, and it was a bit gruesome. Think X-Files with "pseudoscience" instead of aliens. It will probably appeal to some, but unlike what is claimed, it probably won't be in the top three shows of this next year.

The pilot for Leverage, however, was absolutely fantastic. Archie (erm, Timothy Hutton) is great, they do a decent job of technology, the characters are well defined and stay in character, and it feels like a setup for a new show, as versus simply the first episode. It felt like an Ocean's Eleven thing (although I have not seen that): sort of a spy/infiltration thing with good people running the scams. Highly recommended.

Oh. I said I would say something about a plane. Hmm. Nothing to say, really. No plans on taking one in the near future. Besides, ask me no questions, I'll tell you no lies...

bizarre livejournal "features"

2008-07-13T17:34:37Z

This is just a test. If it were a real emergency, I wouldn't be sitting here typing. I suggest other outlets for information in times of emergency.

For my last post, I left it as my default hypercube icon, but used "random" for my mood. Looking at my flist, the post appears to be using my user icon that is named "random". (I also refreshed and lost an interesting looking but deleted post by Pirate, but perchance he'll repost.. (update) sure enough, it's back again)

This may be a subfeature. In order to test it out, I am arbitrarily setting my mood for this post to the strange setting of "lambda", while leaving the user icon as (default). We shall see.

I wonder what it is like to feel lambda. Perhaps it is akin to feeling like a ram?

Immediate edit: ha! It is indeed a "feature". Explicitly choosing an icon forces it through, but if you leave it as defaulting, and your mood matches the name of one of your icons, that decision trumps your standard default.

what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas

2008-07-13T17:23:36Z

That always seemed like a bizarre statement. What, so if you go to Las Vegas and take a picture you aren't allowed to take it home with you? If you did, it would indicate that something actually happened there. They must have huge landfills of photos. And if you get married there, is it only legal and binding within the city, and you have to pretend it never happened when you leave? Or are your memories wiped away?

That means the city limits of Las Vegas are sort of an event event horizon. An event black hole, if you will.

Oh, sorry. I did not mean to be racist. Clearly I meant to say an event African-American hole. (yes, the link is safe -- I don't link to that sort of thing)

just the news, ma'am

2008-07-13T03:13:22Z

The morning news is worth watching just for the comedy. I may have mentioned them having some trouble with the ticker at the bottom of the screen. Today it was quite amusing. First they started with scary weather forecasts, clearly recycled from three days ago, because they were 20°F above what the charming weather guy stated. They removed the weather after about ten minutes. Lowercasing still pervaded, and was slowly repaired.. as they repaired other things. The two prize winners of the morning were:

"Tony Snow dies dies at 53". Wow. I knew you could die, but to die die? I wonder what it would take to die die die. Probably being beat up, having a wasp nest dropped on your head, several pipe bombs set off nearby, while a steamroller slowly edges over your legs. I'd rather just die, thanks very much.

"new iPhone leaves customers frusterated". Frusterated. I like that word. It implies a level of frustration so great that you can no longer conjugate verbs. Indeed, everyone I know who had an old iPhone and stood in line to upgrade their software left with a brick in their hands. A sad, sad day for the iPeople.

During the audio section, they talked about someone who (all caps removed on purpose) "died at the houston methodist hospital of natural causes". I parsed this as "died at the [Houston Methodist Hospital of Natural Causes]". I forget the term for verb-preposition pairs that bind and are generally not allowed to transform away from each other, but "died of" certainly takes precedence over "died at" in my mind. If there is truly a Hospital of Natural Causes, it would be best to stay away from there.

The news was informative and interesting as always, but.. plagued with problems. It was difficult not to treat certain sections of it as if it had been a comedy show.

equalizer waveforms

2008-07-12T02:14:48Z

Every time I need to install Winamp on a new computer, I tend to tweak the equalizer manually. The presets might be okay, but I want more intense medium bass, less intense low vocals, and a bit intense medium-high treble. And I want control over it.

My current settings (on their scale) correlate quite nicely with the graph of 0.2*sin(x²) from -3 to -1. Unintentional, but kind of neat. It probably just adjusts for the acoustical range and volume of my current headphones, as many headphones tend toward the middle range vocals. The graph looks nice, too.

fun with Java

2008-07-11T21:41:42Z

Annoyingly enough, Java won't let you use the @SuppressWarnings(value="unchecked") annotation (or any other annotation) on anonymous static initializer blocks. Suppressing warnings is generally bad, but when you have to interface with a legacy library that doesn't understand generics and basically returns Objects, you need to, because those spurious warnings are annoying.

The Java compiler can be tricked, though:
    @SuppressWarnings(value="unchecked")
    private static void init() { ... }
    static { init(); }

Such a hack requires several lines of comments to explain why it was done, but it pleases me to have defeated such a bizarre restriction. Nobody here really cares about this, but, eh, my space, my choice of topics.

And for the first time in ages, I do happen to be listening to the very song I was going to pick for this post. Nifty!

gawkers ahoy!

2008-07-11T16:33:43Z

Taking the bus home from work last night, traffic slowed and suddenly came to a dead stop. Two miles to get off the bridge took half an hour. The cause? An accident that had been moved way off onto a frontage road (but still had flashing lights). You could see traffic completely packed right up to a line parallel to the accident, and then a practically empty space, where people could accelerate away at normal highway speeds. Checking traffic reports later on, the accident had occurred and been cleared off the road before I even stepped onto the bus.

I don't like my time being wasted just because people want to watch things that are already being taken care of. As a passenger, okay, it's fine to look, but as a driver it is just annoying. Therefore I offer the following advice to gawkers:

If it is something truly dangerous, like a tsunami or tornado, odds are that slowing down and staring at it is a bad idea. If it is mildly dangerous, like seeing someone being mugged in the alley, staring is either a sign of being a useless prat or something the mugger is likely to take offense to. See above. If it is not really dangerous, what's the point?

If people want to gawk, they should go hang out in the waiting area for emergency rooms. There, they can watch people suffer, do nothing about it, watch the television showing car crashes and natural disasters, and have free air conditioning at the same time! Bring some popcorn!

(Note that, of course, I do not want such people to do that. And I understand that traffic, once stopped, resumes in waves that ripple back. But the accident had been so much earlier, and the demarcation line so obvious...)

why people live where they do

2008-07-10T02:56:16Z

Everyone is probably sick and tired of me whining and moaning and carrying on about the weather. "Oh, there's smoke in the air, I can't breathe and the sun looks funny." "Oh, it's summer, that makes it so hot and miserable." I seem to have a double dose of SAD: Smoke Affliction Disorder and Summer Affliction Disorder.

But honestly, that's what keeps me living here (well, that and the food). In the half of my lifetime I have lived out here, clouds of smoke have never invaded this area. And living in the inner bay area, near the coast, it is only unreasonably hot one or two weeks a year. Compared to the epic traumas many people had last winter with sixteen foot snowfalls or this summer with muggy heat waves, this is nothing. My complaining seems quite wussy.

All of this does help me understand why people choose to live where they did. As a child, I was fascinated by how many people lived along the coast, or near intersections of river. "Waterways were the only fast means of transportation" was the standard reason given. Okay, understandable, but our technology has to a certain extent evolved past that: Walmart trucks carry goods to the most remote regions of the country. So why is the population living mostly in coastal areas?

Now I think it is not just inertia that kept people at the previous centres of commerce, spending obscene amounts of money to live there. Places along rivers or coastlines are simply more temperate. The ocean does not change temperature dramatically, so even if it gets hot the ocean cools it down for you, and vice versa. Once you find your latitude and appropriate microclimate, it can be worth it to live somewhere like that, even if it costs you more. Of course, it is a luxury, and often money trumps outdoors comfort: sometimes by necessity, sometimes simply by choice. I choose not to go to expensive restaurants in lieu of buying as many books as I want, such choices being personal ones. Outdoor temperature seems to be high in my list of important things.

So there you have it: a rather simple explanation for something that, even if I understood it subconsciously, I had never thought about since childhood. Score one for heat and smoke. Now if they would only go away...

calls from strangers

2008-07-09T19:52:54Z

If my phone rings and I don't recognize the number, I don't answer it. Very few people know my number. Even fewer call me in any case, and if it is important, they can leave a message. But my phone has rung three times in the last two weeks, all from the same number, leaving no message.

Googling the number suggests that it might be Robert Anderson, DDS. That is not my dentist. It is close to where I used to work, so might have been convenient, but unless the dental industry has been so hard hit by the economy that they are resorting to cold-calling for new customers, he has no reason to call me.

The other possibility, strangely enough, is the Zion First Cogic. It shows up on a list of places to get married in northern California. They, too, would have no reason to phone me, as I am in the market for neither a church nor a wedding.

Maybe next time I'll answer and see who it is. Probably not, though.

implementing democracy as a police state

2008-07-08T19:40:15Z

I'm just going to link to yndy's post about this rather than being repetitive, but apparently Homeland Security wants to treat us all as sex offenders, watching where we go and shocking us whenever they feel like it if we want to fly on an airplane.

Years ago I basically swore off flying. Recently I was thinking of flying out to visit some older relatives who might not be around much longer. This, though, has me convinced that not only would it be a bad idea for either of us to fly, but that it is time to ditch all of my investments in the transportation or tourism industries.

public transit and local vacations

2008-07-06T19:15:52Z

Still in the local news are stories of people who have "seen the light" -- the lightness of their wallets -- and are turning to public transit and taking vacations locally. Public transit ridership is up something like 20% since last year, and most hotels report that their guests are either from overseas (where their currency is worth something) or are from the local area.

Much of me applauds the two trends, as they are good for the environment. Much of me loathes how it took significant increases in the price of gasoline for people to discover these options. And a small part of me wants to cry out: hey, I've been supporting public transit and minimizing my raping of the ecology for years now. You wanna ride the bus? That's fine, but save the seats for me, because I was here first.

I never said I was a nice person, just that I can emulate one from time to time.

It will be interesting to see how long it takes for the common person to discover that living over an hour away from work by car is not really the best thing. The idylls of suburbia have been touted for three generations. The romanticized concept is not going to go away overnight.

tennis rackets of mass destruction

2008-07-05T22:18:22Z

All of the local news stations seem to have given their regular staff the entire summer off to take trips around the world, and have hired interns to replace them. This means all sorts of mistakes are being made every day, and since even Jackie Chan had trouble making it around the world in eighty days, they will continue to be made through the entire summer: incorrect images or stories, the wrong camera being used, lost footage, and errors in the ticker at the bottom of the screen.

The latter was the most humourous gaff today, as someone inserted sports news right in the middle of wildfire news. For whatever reason, the sports news was all lowercase, leading me to wonder if they simply got the ticker input stream confused with their instant messaging window, but the results were amusing:

   williams sisters; another wimbledon showdown
   Full containment expected by July 30th
   Evacuation orders extended

Whoa! That must be some rivalry. People, please remember: tennis matches are extremely dangerous. If you live in the proximity of a tennis court, consider moving.

oh me of little culture

2008-07-05T15:36:13Z

Destined to stay up far too late last night to avoid being woken up by the booming, I polished off an old western from my queue. The funny part came when the preacher, having finished off his cursory pass at the six people being hung, told the crowd of onlookers to join him in singing "Rock of Ages". My first thought was "Hey! Anachronism! They don't know about Def Leppard yet!".

I would also like to say that the Chuck Jones era of Tom and Jerry was absolutely brilliant. The man was a god. It runs from about '62 to '67, I think; the 2pt text noting MCMLX(whatever) is very hard to read. Give me "Bad Day at Cat Rock" or "The Mouse From H.U.N.G.E.R." any day. It is incredible what was done with no dialogue. If they sell a DVD collection of that era I will probably have to buy it, wear it out, and buy it again.

all I really needed to know I learned far earlier than this kid

2008-07-05T02:17:55Z

Local neighbour boy has.. issues. I'm not quite sure what they are. He was, as far as I can tell, tasked with cleaning off the concrete balcony with a broom and some water.

The broom action was not to be missed. Pushing water with a straw broom was good enough, but his Wayne Gretsky impressions were interesting. Most bizarre was sticking the broom between his legs and twirling around, in some sort of cross between Wonder Woman, Harry Potter, and Samantha. Later on the "cleaning" progressed to riding around in a wagon which he can never figure out how to turn, so it was just back and forth, over and over.

Then came the discoveries of the uses of a stick. A stick, when hit against a puddle, apparently makes splashes. When struck against metal bars it causes ringing. And when stabbed into plants repeatedly.. well, I'm not quite sure how that experiment turned out. Probably not well, based on his plaintive cries "there's mud, I need more water!". Those three things kept him entertained for at least twenty minutes.

And to think I expected the booms and bangs of illegal fireworks to be the major source of noise pollution tonight. Life in an apartment building is inexpensive, but occasionally irritating. Much less irritating than buying or selling a house, though, so I suppose I cannot complain much.

where have all the sparks gone?

2008-07-04T18:31:34Z

One of the few traditions I have is to record and watch fireworks specials today, preferably the ones with no commentary and great orchestras playing. In past years, it has been a trick to select which ones to watch, and usually I have to have the TiVo recording one while watching another (this was easier in the days when I had several VCRs hooked up in series).

Today? Nothing. Well, one showing on two of the PBS channels. The "live from the capital" one, which is rarely impressive unless one enjoys fireworks with play-by-play commentary as if it were a sporting event. Where are my fireworks? I am not going to light my own, nor will I wallow through hundreds of thousands of people just to stand three blocks away behind a brick wall hoping to catch reflections of fireworks off of a nearby office building.

Heathens. Sigh.

the helm of jesse (save vs constitution at -10)

2008-07-04T15:56:37Z

Jesse Helms died early this morning.

Societal norms teach us not to speak ill of the dead, so I will say no more. He was probably kind to his mother or something. It would take, say, Fred Phelps kicking the bucket to push me into vitriol, and most already know how I feel about him, so what would be the point?

Except for planning the mobs of picketers around Freddie's funeral. Oh, yes.

the phone that was not a phone

2008-07-02T16:23:03Z

AT&T, bless their generous souls, is going to offer iPhones with no two year contract.

The catch? It costs $400 extra, meaning your $200 phone costs $600 now. Oh, and if you want to legally obtain phone service? You're still going to be stuck with Ma AT&T (albeit on a month-to-month basis -- which no doubt costs a lot more).

So basically you're paying $400 extra for an oversized iPod with no phone service. That's right, ma'am, just lie down, close your eyes, and think of Steve Jobs.