I've been trying to get through Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles. Trying. As fun as it is to see Summer Glau beat up people, I'm on episode 3, and every time I watch it for even 5 minutes I'm overwhelmed by how... right wing it is. I can't find my old post with notes from George Lakoff's lecture (this is what happens when I don't update my tags) so here's another link. The philosophy of the show is Strict Father (well, Mother/Father) through and through: the world is dangerous, and strength and discipline and moral rightness are how you defend yourself.

The first episode was about being pro-active in fighting an enemy (see pre-emptive war on Iraq). Episode 2 established that the mother's role was protection. In both episodes 2 and 3, there is discussion whether killing was justified to protect yourself (see Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo torture). In both, the answer is: sometimes, yes.

I've never watched 24, but I hear it tackles some similar issues (e.g. whether torture is an acceptable means of getting intelligence to stop a terrorist attack was discussed during a GOP primary debate). I can't but help feel that, if you watch these shows and take their ideas to heart, you would probably vote for Bush and McCain because they fit the protective Strict Father template better than Kerry or Obama.

And here I thought it was just another silly action/drama show. Now I'm wondering what messages other FOX shows I've watched (i.e. Firefly and Dollhouse) have hidden in them.

Journal. Right.

Seems like I've been archiving my life of late mostly through Twitter and BGG. In the past few months I have: started dating; submitted a conference paper and got my thesis work off on the right foot; did a spot of gaming; and caught and recovered from pneumonia. Could have been worse. There, now that we're caught up...

I've moved again, hopefully for the last time I'm in Berkeley. I've moved next door into the bedroom. Rent's a bit higher, not that much more space (mostly closet), but I have a door and can now sit up in bed without running into the bunk above me.

The process of moving always depresses me. Sorting through your life and deciding where everything fits, what to sell, and what to throw away. About 6 years, I started collecting various things. This is different from being a packrat (which I am); a packrat saves things in case they come in handy later while a collector actively seeks things out to buy and store. I think I started collecting material things in an attempt to define and solidify my identity. Whatever the reason, most of these are no longer actively pursued, but they chronicle what's happened to me these past several years.

• Everyman's Library Wodehouse Editions: I have 28 of these, though I think they're now up to 64-ish. I stopped collecting for a few reasons. First, the cover art is horrible. Second, the main way to get them on the cheap is to find ones with blemishes, which is the sort of thing that drives collectors mad. Three, I've been reading Wodehouse less and less since I got into Terry Pratchett and comics. Heck, I'm plain reading less.
  
• Cartoon History of the Universe: Bought the first collection (of 5) to give it a whirl, since I like comics and narratives and history. It was okay, but not worth continuing.
  
• Digger: I have 2 of the (so far) 3 print volumes. I still find the comic great; I just wasn't told when the next book is coming out.
  
• Dork Tower: I got collections 1, 2, 3, and 5 before realizing, know what? They're not really worth rereading or collecting. Still subscribed to the RSS feed, but not paying for it.
  
• Megatokyo: Have the first 5 books. Then the comic got... weird. Well, it already had a weird premise. Now the storytelling is disjointed, and it's hard to tell what's going on. It was big when webcomics were new, but I think the times have moved on.
  
• Narbonic: The only reason I haven't bought the 6th and last book is that I was frickin' poor when it came out. I'm still frickin' poor, but priorities! Maybe I can redirect some money from my games budget. Yes, it's that important.
  
• Nodwick: Same boat as Dork Tower. I found them around the same time (to be precise, I found Aaron Williams through John Kovalic's site). Worth following, just not buying.
  
• Order of the Stick: I have 1 of the now 5 books. It's a good comic, really, it's just hard to justify the money when it's all online for free. Maybe someday.
  
• The Complete Peanuts: Similar to Wodehouse, actually. I'm a devotee and won't have a word said against them, and the collection is very well done, but I've passed up buying the 5th box set for some time now. It's just that... 50 years of output is a lot to absorb.
  
• Piled Higher and Deeper: 2 of 3 books. Oh, wait, there's a 4th now. I guess I felt he was running out of fresh material.
  
• Phoenix (Tezuka): I bought 'Karma' for a class, and it's simply... brilliant. I haven't encountered any manga like it since. I'm told this is the best of the lot, but I still want to read the others.
  
• Sandman (Gaiman): This is what I've been buying with my last few Amazon gift certificates. The Absolute Sandman collections are unabashedly pretty. Oh, and good reading.

Since becoming serious (well, more serious) about graduating, and my time management skills haven't correspondingly improved, I've been getting out less and less. Here's the run down: David, Jenn, and I went to a free day at the California Academy of Science but got there late to see what Roberts called, "the best parts." We also ate Burmese food for dinner. In early March, I picnicked up by the rose garden, but they weren't in bloom yet. The best laid plans... St. Patrick's Day was mentioned earlier. Before spring break, there was a birthday party for Alex. I came out and found my bike stolen. Later in the month, I toured the train museum in Sacramento. In this age where air travel and moving across the country is commonplace, I forgot that California was really cut off from the rest of the country until trains made transport faster and less dangerous. This Friday, David and Jenn and Ricky hosted sausagefest, which was a bbq with sausage, grilled vegetables, and a lot of forestry and logging sports folks. And Saturday was a team dinner at Au Coquelet and watching random videos at Jessica's afterward. I miss hanging out with the team.

Right, now back to my paper.

I've spent a little too much time browsing Instructables, especially since I don't have the power tools (or garage/workshop) to do the really cool projects. If I did:

• Magnetic Rubik's Cube made out of dice!
  
• Tetris bookshelf
  
• Something that floats
  

Hmmm... A loud-mouth girl who never listens; her friend who is continually dragged into situations; a cute mascot character; the quiet girl who excels at everything she tries; and the mysterious transfer student who smiles eerily all the time. Suzumiha Haruhi is really Azumanga Daioh!

Um, yeah.

Edit: Also, Chiyo Mihama + Ayumu "Osaka" Kasuga = Yotsuba Koiwai. It's a scary dangerous combination.

Graduate student looking for roommates, people in co-op, or group looking for one more person. Very quiet, doesn't throw loud parties, stays at work late most nights. Currently has a lease suitable for 2-3 people but willing to move. Flexible to location and price. Has been known to help with EE homework, have late night conversations about ballroom, teaching, and research, and comes with a large collection of board and card games.

This is how David, Jenn, and I spent the night of St. Patrick's Day:

• Walk to an Irish pub: Full.
  
• Walk to Iranian New Year's street festival: Out of food.
  
• Walk to Pie in the Sky pizzeria: Closed.
  
• Walk to a pho house: Closed.
  
• Walk to Tuk Tuk Thai: Food.

Teach For America was on NPR (Talk of the Nation) earlier this afternoon. The guest wrote a (generally positive, by my guess) book following 4 TFA teachers in Los Angeles. The host was not in devil's advocate mode. Response from callers was mixed. Take away points:

• Turnover rate of TFA teachers is high, but then so is the turnover rate among new teachers as a whole, especially in troubled school districts.
  
• TFA says that a majority of their corps stay in education, though maybe not as teachers or in the same school districts they were assigned to.
  
• TFA claims that even those who leave teaching and education are changed by conditions they experienced and things they saw, pointing to the numbers of former-TFA who are in education reform.
  
• The 2-year commitment does little to address the fact that teaching, by and large, is not a respected profession. Liable to punishment by the government, blamed by the parents, not respected by the students, while being underpaid.
  

My first attempt at making shiitake mushrooms taste like bacon ended up with burnt mushrooms.

Take 2 had me closely watching and taste testing the mushrooms. And I noticed they didn't taste anything like bacon. And then I noticed I didn't put any salt. And then I noticed I had put in too much salt.

So I rinsed them and nuked off the water. The ones that still have moisture, they still taste like mushrooms. The ones that have dried... kinda taste like bacon. Will have to try this again and closely monitor the salt and cooking time.

Guess what I made?

( Read more... )

I used a modified version of Kawasaki's original rose here. I've done it a few times now, so I've made a few notes on this set of instructions.

5) Creases should go all the way to the inner square, but not into it. These will show up in the center of the rose.
7) Creases do not go all the way to the center line.
9) At the end of this step, I like to crease the 4 flaps around the square (seen in this image) to prepare for how it looks in this one.
12-13) Yes, go ahead and do these steps on each corner together as 13 will help keep step 12 from unfolding.
16) Fold what was the point in then fold corner over it. There should be no flap leftover.
17) Curling rather than creasing does look better, but the curve of the petals will pinch them eventually. I tried creasing the centermost tip and curling the rest, and that seems to work. Note that having the crease/curl too close to the other creases on that flap may cause ripping later on.
18) Lift the flap before folding.
19-20) Like 12-13, it's easier to do these together. Bigger flaps will make it easier for the flaps to stay when they're folded together, so I don't stuff the triangle all the way into their pockets.

Okay, so I'm not that good at budgeting. February was supposed to be the easy month, with a $36 credit to my rent (interest on our deposit which, incidentally, was a better return than my mutual funds) and 2 days less food to buy. Instead of being $46 dollars underbudget, I was $46 overbudget because I was a little overzealous with my entertainment allotment. And I forgot about things like utilities. And then my bike ran over a staple, and I had to get the tire fixed.

On the plus side, I somehow stayed under $5/day for food. This basically involves living off spaghetti and cereal. But, funnily enough, I think I'm actually eating better, at least caloric-wise, since I'm eating 3 meals (or approximations thereof) a day for the first time in years. But my taste buds are now so bored that practically anything else is cause for celebration. And, based off the lack of medical problems, I'm assuming I'm okay in terms of nutrition. And I've only had to resort to ramen 6 times. I'm scoring this as a minor victory as cheap eating out in the bay area starts at about $6 a meal.

But, honestly, I'm desperate for recipes. Specifically: cheap and simple ones, with common ingredients, which I can make a batch of on the weekend and bring to work for lunch. Like a chicken I can serve with rice or a casserole.

Month 2 has already started. And I really want to buy the last Narbonic book. *sigh*

Guess what I made?

( Read more... )

Thanks to Vicky for the link and paper, and to the Berkeley Ballroom Classic for having me watch the door for 4 hours with nothing better to work on.

The Paramount Theater is showing classic movies again.

Friday 13 February: The Philadelphia Story
Friday 20 February: Casablanca

I would love to go to both of these, but my Princeton Review audition may be this Friday.

Since I'm poor, I can't buy roses. Basically, the world flower industry grows roses in greenhouses during the winter, carefully times their blooming, and imports masses of them to the US for just one day. All that hoop jumping raises the cost a bit.

However, there is an alternative. And, frankly, I think they're niftier since they take time and care to make: paper roses. There are many different methods, which fall into 3 broad categories:

• Rolling one long strip: 1 2
  
• Origami: 1
  
• Attaching petals: 1 2 3
  

It's 45°F out. Blood sugar is dropping. It's the bike home, uphill, after staying in the lab late. Blasting Jive music in my earphones makes it so much more bearable. I think know why runners jog to music.

I realized yesterday that it takes almost as long to get to Palo Alto or San Jose by public transport as it does it get to Sacramento. Considering that Sacramento is almost twice as far as Palo Alto, as the crow flies, and the Berkeley and Palo Alto are supposedly part of the same metropolitan region (at least that's what it looks like on Google maps), there's something wrong with this picture.

By the way, if you take the BART into San Francisco, as you approach Embarcadero, someone drew a series of frames that animate as you flash by. I think it was on the left side, but not entirely sure. Anyway, it was a nifty surprise.

EDIT: The wonders of the interweb:

(This is a Facebook meme, but since my LJ syndicates to my Facebook notes, I'll kill two birds with one post.)

Rules: Once you've been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it's because I want to know more about you.

1. James doesn't have any random stuff because he already posts all his random stuff to his LJ and Twitter. So he's just going to plagiarize others.
   
2. I've only lived in 3 cities in 2 states in 1 country: Texas, 21 years; California 6 years. I like the bay area for the geek culture and its mild winters (my circulation is crap) and wouldn't mind staying in the area.
   
3. An increasing number of people I know have jobs, a marriage, and/or kids while I have none of the above. This makes me feel both young (fancy free and free for anything fancy) and old (people my age are getting on). I'm also increasingly "that grad student whose been around forever."
   
4. I got to visit my nieces over the break. They are the greatest things since sliced bread.
   
5. Sushi: yes, especially unagi. Cake: as a treat. Chocolate: dark, yes! Cheese: yes, especially ones with flavor like cheddar, gouda, and asiago. Cheese sandwiches: with a slice of meat, maybe? I end up eating a lot of pasta because it's quick and easy.
   
6. Reading books is the intellectual activity I don't nearly enough of; the number of books I finish reading each year is embarrassing. Instead, I "read" graphic novels, online content, and listen to audiobooks while I eat dinner.
   
7. I want to visit many countries but cannot afford the time or money. Actually, what I want to do live in a country for a week or month like a normal person to experience how they live. No idea how to arrange that, though.
   
8. My next big purchase is to adopt a cat, but I can't have one for the foreseeable future because of apartment rules, so I'm not saving for anything in particular right now. Except a ukulele or kalimba and more games.
   
9. My ideal future job is to become a professor, one that spends most (all?) of his time teaching.
   
10. I have one pair of street shoes and about 5 pairs of dance shoes.
    
11. When it's just a friend and me, I try to keep up my end of the conversation. When it's a party or more than two people, I like to be a wallflower.
    
12. is a master procrastinator. There are literally dozens of projects and things I can do instead of what I should be doing.
    
13. I treat other people's stuff far better than I treat my own. My stuff is generally lying around anywhere in random heaps.
    
14. My flute teacher made a bird man costume and jumped from a mountain (well, a tall hill people called Mount Bonell). It didn't turn out so well.
    
15. There are some things about me I don't care what people think. There are some things I care very much what they think. There are some people I don't care what they think. There are some people I care very much what they think about me.
    
16. I try to use proper grammar in e-mails and IMs, but I'm not a prescriptive grammarian. I'm enough of a linguist to know that it's pedantic.
    
17. My worst nightmare is for my brain to fail: mental disability, death.
    
18. My parents sometimes say I can be too nice, but I don't think so. I could be more assertive and take the last slice of pie more often, but I'm not a doormat. Rather, I wish I was more considerate.
    
19. It's hard to keep up with a bunch of webcomics, so I've stopped trying unless they have feed setup (like xkcd and Cat and Girl). I make an exception for the works of Shaenon Garrity.
    
20. I own a lot of boardgames, so many that I've run out of shelf space and probably couldn't name half off the top of my head. This is what happens when you're the only one willing to shell out for games.
    
21. I like dabbling in many things rather than perfecting just one; life is more rich and interesting that way. Such things include: sailing, voice lessons, poi spinning, juggling, various languages. I think a unicycle would be fun.
    
22. There was a month when I tried to take a picture every day. People didn't like their picture taken. My attempts to find something worth photographing became increasing desperate. That didn't turn out so well either.
    
23. I've stopped accepting Facebook friends unless I've communicated in any fashion with that person in the last year. Somehow, I still have 202 "friends." If I removed all those who don't meet that criterion right now, it'd probably be a lot lower. Never got the hang of using Facebook to keep up with people. I'll say one good thing about this meme: I've heard from people who I've missed talking to for some time.
    
24. My IM buddy list is pretty similar. I spend most of my time talking to the same one or two people.
    
25. Okay, I'll make one original contribution: I have a recurring dream where I can take a running start, leap into the air, and just keep soaring through the campus, city, what have you. I really want to take hang gliding lessons.

I'm going to see if I can get by on $9,000 per year. That's a little unrealistic in the bay area, what with my already low rent taking 2/3rds of that, but we'll see. Actually, I've already cheated by making a few large purchases (thank you, Amazon rewards certificates) in January, before I started keeping track. Anyway, $750/month. Should be interesting.

Edit: Speak of the devil

Edit x2: I can make ramen at work using tupperware and the hot water dispenser.

So here's a bit of interesting non-speech audio signal processing: Songsmith. The idea is that you sing into your computer, and the program (after you specify a genre and BPM) automatically generates the accompaniment. This is a non-trivial piece of signal processing, as it has to figure out your key and use music theory to figure out what chord progression matches the notes used, and it appears to do this in real-time. It would be really impressive if it could give amateur singers a recording of, say, YouTube or MySpace quality.

Too bad it isn't that impressive. The interweb has decided the software's best application is comedy:

• Here's Wonderwall by Oasis, made techno
  
• Here's Roxanne by The Police, as Latin
  
• To round out the trio, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band by The Beatles
  

You will find this link funny if you're a Monty Python fan and know about Fluxx. It also helps if you know about Puerto Rico and Caracassonne (the games, not the island or city). I don't know how large that set intersection is, or how many of them read this blog, so I'll just violently giggle to myself for a while.

I wrote a reply underneath. If you get it, then you \in {Monty Python} \cap {Carcassonne}.