Jeremy's Blog

Now the star wars can really begin

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy) — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 20:51:00 +0000

I can remember a time when astronomers were excited to have discovered the first extra-solar planet (planets outside of our own solar system). It was only 1991, which wasn't that long ago. I'm no astronomer, but I was excited by the discovery as well. Somehow it made the infinitely huge universe seem that much larger.

Well, that discovery was, like, sooo last decade. Since then astronomers have identified nearly 350 planets abroad in the Milky Way. Some of them, scientists speculate, are likely to have similar conditions to our own planet Earth.

But wait! There's a new reason to feel that the universe is expanding. Astronomers are now stating that they may have seen the first extra-galactic planet. It showed up when they applied a microlensing technique in the direction of the Andromeda Galaxy, roughly 2.5 million light years away. The new planet is said to have six times the mass of Jupiter.

No one has stated yet whether the newly discovered planet is inhabited by wookies.

[Full Story]

This was hard to figure out...

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy) — Tue, 12 May 2009 10:46:00 +0000

... and it doesn't even include the regex .dll I had to write in C# to make the stored procedure work! Watch it crash when I actually put it live : )

CREATE PROCEDURE [dbo].[UpdateFolderSort]
(
@folder_id int,
@folder_sort int = NULL
)

AS

DECLARE @root_decimal varchar(500)
DECLARE @folder_parent int
DECLARE @old_decimal varchar(500)
DECLARE @folder_level int
DECLARE @pos int
DECLARE @level_loop int
DECLARE @regex_prefix varchar(500)

BEGIN
SET @folder_parent = (SELECT folder_parent FROM Folders WHERE folder_id = @folder_id)
END

BEGIN
IF @folder_parent IS NOT NULL
SET @root_decimal = (SELECT folder_decimal FROM Folders WHERE folder_id = @folder_parent)
END

BEGIN
SET @old_decimal = (SELECT folder_decimal FROM Folders WHERE folder_id = @folder_id)
SET @old_decimal = RIGHT(@old_decimal, 4)
END

BEGIN
SET @folder_level = (SELECT folder_level FROM Folders WHERE folder_id = @folder_id)
END

IF @folder_level = 1
BEGIN
UPDATE
Folders
SET
folder_decimal = STUFF(folder_decimal, 1, 4, SUBSTRING('0000',1,4 - LEN(CONVERT(varchar(4), @folder_sort))) + CONVERT(varchar(4), @folder_sort))
WHERE
dbo.RegexMatch(folder_decimal, @old_decimal + '\.') = 1 AND folder_lineage LIKE '%/' + CONVERT(varchar(4), @folder_id) + '/%'
END
ELSE
BEGIN
SET @pos = ((@folder_level - 1) * 4) + @folder_level

SET @level_loop = 1
SET @regex_prefix = ''
WHILE @level_loop < @folder_level
BEGIN
SET @regex_prefix = @regex_prefix + '\d{4}\.'
SET @level_loop = @level_loop + 1
IF @level_loop = @folder_level
BREAK
ELSE
CONTINUE
END

UPDATE
Folders
SET
folder_decimal = STUFF(folder_decimal, @pos, 4, SUBSTRING('0000',1,4 - LEN(CONVERT(varchar(4), @folder_sort))) + CONVERT(varchar(4), @folder_sort))
WHERE
dbo.RegexMatch(folder_decimal, @regex_prefix + @old_decimal + '\.') = 1 AND folder_lineage LIKE '%/' + CONVERT(varchar(4), @folder_id) + '/%'
END

BEGIN
IF @root_decimal IS NOT NULL
BEGIN
UPDATE
Folders
SET
folder_sort = @folder_sort,
folder_decimal = @root_decimal + '.' + SUBSTRING('0000',1,4 - LEN(CONVERT(varchar(4), @folder_sort))) + CONVERT(varchar(4), @folder_sort)
WHERE
folder_id = @folder_id
END
ELSE
BEGIN
UPDATE
Folders
SET
folder_sort = @folder_sort,
folder_decimal = SUBSTRING('0000',1,4 - LEN(CONVERT(varchar(4), @folder_sort))) + CONVERT(varchar(4), @folder_sort)
WHERE
folder_id = @folder_id
END
END

You know you're having a bad day when...

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy) — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 03:39:00 +0000

You're bicycling down the road and all of the sudden you're knocked out by a corpse thrown from a speeding car.

True story.

Don't Answer

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy) — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 02:59:00 +0000

I don't want answers.

I want to be inspired to the possibilities.
I need a mystery,
A promise of an answer
Skirting softly in flickers of secret glances,
Written in glyphs carved in stone
no one remembers,
Spoken in dead languages,
Indecipherable,
An old key to a lock to no one knows where
found in a box in the back of the closet.
Mysteries open ended where the truth,
if there ever was one,
is whatever story you wove that fit the clues

or simply the question alone,
left unanswered.

When you said no,
that you were leaving,
I couldn't understand.
You spoke too clearly.
What did you mean?

Gun control laws are totally useless...

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy) — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 18:55:00 +0000

I read the following and thought, there's no amount of safety laws you can have to protect people from guns.

Glasgow, Ky, Oct. 21 -- Luther Johnson, a young farmer living in the southern
part of this county, blew into the muzzle of a shotgun early this morning to see
if it was loaded. It was.

Actual death notice published in the Louisville Courier-Journal, October 22, 1899

Facebook, you don't know me.

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy) — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 00:11:00 +0000

Facebook has unveiled a mockup of their new home page, which looks like an improvement at first glance. There's new features for filtering out the noise and showing just what means most to you. I like that.

Then I saw the new "Hilights" section and rolled my eyes. It's not surprising that Facebook would move towards pushing content to its users. It's more surprising that it's taken them so long to get around to that. It's the way that they're doing it that makes me cringe.

Featured photos, events, notes and more that you don't want to miss. Stories are chosen based on what your friends have interacted with.

[My emphasis]

In the early days of TiVo, users complained about the heavily played up profile feature that automatically recorded programs that it thought its users would want to see, without them explicitly specifying such programs, based on what they had watched before. It sounded like a good feature, that is until TiVo decided they were gay.

Look, Facebook, here's the thing. You don't know me. And you're not going to find out what I like using some algorithm that analyzes what my friends click on. I don't really have much in common with my friends (even the real ones, not just the ones I recruited to help me kick ass in Mob Wars). I like my friends exactly because of our differences. I tried to hang out with people who are like me and it was just annoying, probably because I often annoy myself.

I've got some weird friends too, into some weird things. It's fine that they're into weird things, they're my friends, but I don't really go there myself, you know? No, you don't know. And that's the point. You're just a super-computer sitting out there running statistics to see how many of my friends watch a certain television show. If enough of them are lesbians and watch The L Word, somehow that means I'm a lesbian too?

Dude, you seriously don't know me, so stop pretending that you do.

Oh, and by the way, you suck at pushing content anyway. All those people you think I might know sitting over there on the side of your old home page... I didn't know any of them. That creepy looking guy with the mean mug that you left up there for three months thinking I might know him, though after hundreds of page loads your algorithm should of guessed that I didn't, well, he's just creepy. Please don't push me any content he clicked on.

Thanks.

Partial sunshine of the spot-filled mind

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy) — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 16:00:00 +0000

One of my favorite movies of all time is Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

Basic plot:

A couple undergo a procedure to erase each other from their memories when their relationship turns sour, but it is only through the process of loss that they discover what they had to begin with.

Awesome tagline:

I already forget how I used to feel about you.

So anyway, giving credence to the idea that there really is a pill for everything, it appears that scientists in the UK have developed a pill that promises to selectively erase painful memories. Woah, talk about redefining the human condition. As one medical ethics lecturer in London put it: "Removing bad memories is not like removing a wart or a mole. It will change our personal identity since who we are is linked to our memories."

Everyone has their personal traumas and demons. I know I have mine, and I've never met a person who didn't suffer from some dark memory. But I don't think I could give them up. I wouldn't say that personal identity is "linked to our memories". I would say that they are entirely comprised of our memories. Any sort of present awareness is transitory, slipping into the past in less than nanoseconds. The only thing that connects these isolated moments to a personal identity, a sense of self, is memory.

The question, instead, is whether bad memories have good value. That's a really tough call. Imagine, really, an eternal sunshine of the spotless mind. I mean, it's called the human "condition" for a reason. It's nearly impossible to even think about a complete bliss. The best we could even consider, if we're being honest about it, is a near-bliss. I think we need our bad memories in some way to be human.

Maybe a partial sunshine of the spot-filled mind is spot on, and being half-miserable is being full-human.

(See also Memento, where a man suffering from short-term memory loss has to rely on tattooing important things on his body to cling to a sense of self.)

X-Files 3 is a definite maybe

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy) — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 02:43:00 +0000

I know everyone out there who saw the X-Files: I Want to Believe and wasn't impressed will roll their eyes, but I don't care. With 2012 looming on the horizon, and the show's mythology targeting that date for an end-of-the-world alien colonization, it's just enough to keep hope alive in the franchise despite lackluster box office earnings for the second movie last summer.

Frank Spotnitz (X-Files Producer) responded to the XF3 possibility question at a book signing on Feb. 21, 2009 by saying "I will be very surprised if there isn't another X-Files movie before 2012." [view video of the response]

Yay!

The second movie didn't completely bomb, and it did turn a profit. Plus, a lot of fans said that they were disappointed that it wasn't an epic alien flick like this possible third one promises to be. Blah, blah, blah, I don't care. Just put Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny in it, stamp a big X across the movie poster, and at least one fan, I, will watch it no matter what.

Ice storm '09 pics

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy) — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 16:47:00 +0000

[Finally got around to posting pics of the ice storm... what, almost a month later? : ) ]

So there was snow and ice, and before it could melt off there was more snow and ice. It wasn't that much -- I think we only got three to five inches total around here -- but the weight of it all accumulated on the smaller twigs at the end of limbs and around 1:30 in the morning on Jan. 28th we heard a few big breaks and the power went off. The power stayed off for seven days, and we had record low temperatures in those seven days. And it was cold.

This is what I woke to in my front yard on Wednesday. We have two beautiful flower producing trees out front and now they just look sad. This picture doesn't do it justice. You couldn't walk anywhere without having to step over branches. See that big clump by the front door? That wasn't there when Tracie walked out the first time. She stepped outside on the front porch, came back in, said it was bad, then BOOM! and the whole front porch was covered. She missed it coming down on her head by five seconds, at most.

The dog loved it, though.

Everything was covered in snow and ice. This is our back deck. As you can see, most of our yard is covered in trees. We thought it was charming. Don't tell the neighbors, but I think it was the trees in our yard that knocked all the power out in the neighborhood. Oops.

It was cold. I'm not that chubby. That's five layers of clothes. We spent most of the time under a mountain of clothes and blankets, but I get antsy if I'm idle too long, something about the amount of coffee I drink.

Exactly one day was halfway decent. The temperature got up to the upper '50s, so we spent the day out on the deck soaking up the sun, just relaxing. This actually made the whole experience worthwhile. I have a pretty busy life and forget to take the time every now and then to just... relax. When forced into that situation, it doesn't escape my notice that it's different, and special. I grilled up some of the meat from the freezer before it went bad and just enjoyed nature for a few hours, at a time when any sane person would be bemoaning it. The sun really does replenish the soul.

See? That's a Jeremy squinting in the sun, but at peace with everything.

The dog loved it.

And even the cats were happy for awhile (of course the particular cat pictured here is the most spoiled cat in the entire world anyway).

Most of the days weren't this nice, though, and it was a bit of a struggle. It's not like I'm a landscaper who makes his money off grinding falling limbs. I'm a techie who sorta needs power to get things done. So I spend a lot of time running around borrowing wi-fi connections from coffee shops, the parking lots of hotels, and the library.

Now that's actually interesting, and worthy of comment. I was an early adopter of wi-fi and bought one of the first laptops to come equipped with a wi-fi antenna. I set up my house with a wireless router, had fun moving from room to room without breaking connection, and loved the freedom it gave to work anywhere around the house. The first day I got it, I went wardriving, looking for open connections around the neighborhood. Eventually, though, it lost its novelty and I stopped carrying my laptop with me everywhere I go. When I'm out, the last thing I want to do is work, so I don't spend much time surfing the web when I'm away from the home or office. I'm probably one of the few who don't bother getting a data package for his mobile phone. I don't really need it.

So anyway, forced to rely on wi-fi after the ice storm, rather than recreationally wardriving out of curiosity, I'm amazed at how far the adoption has come in just a few years. I mean, it used to be that you had to creepily park out in front of people's homes or offices, or maybe hop a few fences to get a decent connection. Nowadays we're permeated with Internet signals. They're everywhere. If you can't find a public, open, and free connection today, you really are off the map. I guess it's always been that invisible radio signals were passing through us carrying the voices of talk show hosts and Elvis, but it's weird to think that spam, porn, and this guy are now out there microwaving the cells in our brain. *shivers*

Back to the ice storm...

We shouldn't bitch. Across the state of Kentucky, at least a half a million homes were without power and the storm is blamed for at least 36 deaths. We had some resources at our disposal, and I was like a friggin' Boy Scout as a kid and went camping all the time in winter, so we didn't do too bad.

Every day the news was talking about how many houses had their power turned back on that day. It was a lot, but I knew we were towards the bottom of the list. Towards the end, you could sort of guess when they would have yours back on (there weren't many left). When we figured there was only a day or two without power left, we sprung for a hotel room with a hot tub in it.

Why the hot tub in the room? Well, 'cause that's how we roll.

-------

After the power came back on, things pretty much went back to normal, but we had a lot more debris in our yard than most of my neighbors. I didn't want to waste the opportunity, so last weekend we had a big bonfire, a couple of beers, and some marshmallows to toast it all.

My dad came down for our little party. He's drunk.

It was fun. I guess I could of dragged all this stuff out to the side of the road and someone would have picked it up eventually, but what better way to celebrate ice than with fire?

A pirate's life for me... definitely.

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy) — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 15:44:00 +0000

So what do you do when you're the most infamous repository of file sharing links on the web, and someone finally drags you into a Swedish court? Well, if you're PirateBay.org, not only do you bring your entourage of Harvard Law students and a "media juggernaut of bloggers, Twitterers, and press", you cart them all from Belgrade to Stockholm in this totally awesome bus called S23K. Then you promise to broadcast the entire spectacle via Twitter feeds (#spectrial), IRC channels, blogs, and you throw in a live audio feed of the entire trial to boot. And then, in the middle of it all, you throw a HUGE party paid for with donated cash!

Napster punked out, totally.

So as a programmer who enjoys his own rights to his own intellectual property, I don't know where I stand on their swap everything service, but I do like their anti-establishment style. With all their crew of personal press, they don't miss the opportunity to thumb their nose at the traditional press, saying, "[we] do not speak with assholes".

Full story

We're rascals, scoundrels, villans, and knaves,
Drink up, me 'earties, yo ho.

Kerouac quotes that come to mind...

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy) — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 03:14:00 +0000

"A pain stabbed my heart, as it did every time I saw a girl I loved who was going the opposite direction in this too-big world." - Jack Kerouac

"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes 'Awww!'" - Jack Kerouac

"I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another till I drop. This is the night, what it does to you. I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion." - Jack Kerouac

Chevette memories, Part 2

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy) — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 23:10:00 +0000

In '94 I got my second car, a 1979 gray Chevette. Billy had bought it off a little ol' lady who never drove it, so the mileage was actually pretty low for a late-70s car. He had gotten into some trouble and couldn't drive, something about driving without a license and getting into an accident. He said I could have it for $375. I didn't have that much so my girlfriend paid for most of it. I think I paid her back. I can't remember.

My first Chevette was just rust pretending to be a car, a stack of paper clips waiting to fall apart. This one... this one was a tank! I couldn't kill it no matter what I did. I'd be driving down the road and on a whim decide to swerve off and try to flip it on the embankment, but nope, it wasn't having that. It'd keep trucking on, forty-five miles per hour at a forty-five degree angle, and I couldn't flip it for nothing. That surprised me too because Chevettes are really light vehicles. At school, about five of us got together and lifted Steve's Chevette and put it on some cinder blocks, as a prank.

In parking lots, when there's tons of snow they scoop it up into big piles that become solid ice eventually. I ran my little gray Chevette straight into one and, nothing, just plowed right over it. The thing was a pure tank. Mail boxes, railroad ties, street signs, mud, nothing stopped it.

It actually caught fire once. I was driving back from Columbus, smelled gas, and saw some smoke coming from the engine. I pulled over to the side of I-71 and lifted the hood to find the carburetor on fire. It was just a little fire, and I was able to pat it out. Got back in and kept driving. Like a tank, the car just kept rolling.

[Note: Hey Kaitlyn and Padrick. Skip reading the above. Your uncle is an idiot.]

Don't get me wrong, the car wasn't perfect. For one thing, it had the baldest tires I've ever driven on. There was this one corner over by Blue Rock Road where every time it snowed, no matter how slow I took the corner, the car decided it would keep going straight and run into a telephone poll. Every time. I can only imagine what the people in the house across the street thought when they'd see me come down the road, slide into the poll, get out to push the car out of the snow, come back a few hours later and slide right into it again. And again. And again. Not even on purpose.

The other problem with Chevette 2 is that the ignition system eventually went out. I tried to fix it but, again, I don't know anything about cars. The only way I could start it is by popping the solenoid, that is, taking a screwdriver and crossing two spokes to make a spark. This is done in the engine and the key needs to be turned to start when you do it, so you need a friend to turn the key for you while you damn near electrocute yourself. Luckily, Billy, license-free, was always palling around with me. But when you're by yourself, you have to come up with elaborate ways to keep the key in start while you're doing it.

Eventually, the ignition thingy didn't work at all and the car wouldn't start for me whatever I did. But, here's the thing, it did not die! Still! I couldn't kill it, but rather, it just got tired of me I guess. I got it towed out to my parent's growing car graveyard and left it there thinking it was dead-dead. But no, I learned later that my younger brother got it up and running and drove it, too, for the longest time. In fact, I don't know exactly what ever became of it. The tank is probably still out there plowing over stuff for some kid that just got his license.

Believe it or not, there's a part three.

Chevette memories, Part 1

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy) — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 14:11:00 +0000

My first car was a 1982 blue Chevette that I got in '93, I think. I was a late driver. I got my learner's permit at age fifteen, like everyone else, but I didn't get an actual car until I was 17. I didn't have any money as a kid, didn't have an evening job, worked a summer job once but blew all of the money on stupid stuff, and was one of three military brats in a single-income family. We weren't poor, really, but an E-8 pay grade isn't as much as you'd think it should be. My dad bought this car for me, but it was only $250.

It was my senior year at a Cincinnati high school and my dad had just retired from the military and bought a house out in rural Ripley, Ohio, which is basically the sticks. I didn't want to go. I really, really didn't want to go and got into so many fights with my folks about it, it was crazy. My dad (love the guy) thought it would cheer me up if I had a car, and found this ol' beat up Chevette a neighbor was selling. Out in the sticks, the rumors are true, everyone has three or four broke down cars in their yard for sell. We test drove it down 763, a hilly and curvy rode which is actually perfect for test driving cars. It made a lot of rattling that we thought we could fix, so we bought it.

I didn't give us a chance to fix it. A few days later I was missing my girlfriend and got the itch to get back to Cincinnati. I packed all my shit into the Chevette and "ran away". Downhill it was fine, but on every uphill the car would start ticking -- a tick, tick, tick, tick -- just like a bomb, I swear. It was something about some rods or something in the engine. I didn't and still don't know anything about cars.

The foothills of the Appalachians east of Cincinnati are all hills. So it was like, smooooth... tick, tick, tick, tick, smooooth... tick, tick, tick, tick, smooooth [smell of something burning]... tick, tick, tick, tick... tick... tick... TICK, TICK, TICK BOOM! Just like a bomb, big poof of smoke and everything.

I had made it to just outside of Mt. Orab and had to call my dad to come and pick me up, which was just demoralizing. It's hard to make your great escape when you end up having to call the prison guard to come and pick you up. We strapped some tow cables to the Chevette and dragged it back to my parent's farm, where it sat in the yard for a few more years before someone bought it for $25 as scrap metal. I think I may have put at most 50 miles on that thing total.

So ends my first car, my first Chevette, RIP.

Latte with a shot of ectoplasm

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy) — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 01:26:00 +0000

I just recently learned that a coffee house I frequent is home to the ghost of a man who shot himself in the head in 1929. This happened in the bathroom, and apparently the bullet hole is still there today. It's hard to say "cool" considering the circumstances surrounding the man's death, but I must check this out!

From the web:

The Lock and Key Coffeehouse can be found at 201 Main Street in Georgetown, and it's located in a building with quite a checkered past. Built in 1899, it was originally John McMeekin's Furniture and Funeral Parlor, then went through a number of permutations over the years, including a bank, a food stamp office, and an antique mall.

In 1929, during its incarnation as the Georgetown National Bank, president George T. Hambrick committed suicide in the bank's restroom by placing a pistol to his head. It exited through his skull and lodged in the wall, where the bullethole is framed today as a historical curiosity.

A farewell to Bushisms - Top 10

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy) — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 03:35:00 +0000

As George Bush left office today, so, sadly, did the unique form of humor we call Bushisms. In honor of this passing, here are the Top 10 preserved for posterity:

10) "Families is where our nation finds hope, where wings take dream." —LaCrosse, Wis., Oct. 18, 2000

9) "I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family." —Greater Nashua, N.H., Jan. 27, 2000

8) "I hear there's rumors on the Internets that we're going to have a draft." —second presidential debate, St. Louis, Mo., Oct. 8, 2004

7) "I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully." —Saginaw, Mich., Sept. 29, 2000

6) "You work three jobs? … Uniquely American, isn't it? I mean, that is fantastic that you're doing that." —to a divorced mother of three, Omaha, Nebraska, Feb. 4, 2005

5) "Too many good docs are getting out of the business. Too many OB-GYNs aren't able to practice their love with women all across this country." —Poplar Bluff, Mo., Sept. 6, 2004

4) "They misunderestimated me." —Bentonville, Ark., Nov. 6, 2000

3) "Rarely is the questioned asked: Is our children learning?" —Florence, S.C., Jan. 11, 2000

2) "Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we." —Washington, D.C., Aug. 5, 2004

1) "There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again." —Nashville, Tenn., Sept. 17, 2002

They'll see us waving from such great heights

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy) — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 01:47:00 +0000

I had to give a website demo at the Hilton Netherland Plaza in front of forty or fifty people today. That was interesting, but just business. The fun part is that I decided to take advantage of the opportunity and visit the observation deck atop the Carew Tower.

The Carew Tower (pictured below) was built in 1929, in a French art deco style, and still maintains many of it's original art deco charms today. It's also Cincinnati's tallest building, but only gets to claim that fame for a few more years. In 2011, the new Great American Insurance building at Queen City Square will be 86 feet taller.

It was cold outside, overcast with snow flurries. I was surprised the deck was open today. Actually, the last time I had been to the top of the Carew Tower was exactly ten years ago, pre-911, so I wasn't sure if people were still allowed to go out there. Cold, but happy, I found that at least some things don't change. Still $2.

To get to the 49th floor is kind of interesting. The main elevator doesn't go that far. It stops at the 45th. You have to get off at the 45th floor and round a corner to a service elevator and take that up the remaining four floors (or take the stairs). The service elevator smells like old grease, or body odor, I couldn't tell which. It's about as large as a porta-potty and you get the feeling that it should have been decommissioned thirty years ago.

The actual observation deck is open-aired (cold air today). No bars, barely a rail, and I was wondering what velocity a penny might drop if you tossed it over the edge and resisted the urge to do so. It takes a minute to get your bearings. Though it's perfectly safe unless you have the actual intention of jumping off, you still get a little vertigo from just being outside that far up.

It's cliche, but the people really do look like ants.

That's my car circled in red. I parked on top of the garage just so I could take a picture. By the way, driving down the corkscrew to leave the garage is fun too.

It's a strange perspective to you find yourself looking down on other tall buildings.

They'll see us waving from such great heights.
'Come down now,' they'll say.
But everything looks perfect from far away.
'Come down now,' but we'll stay...

Life is art

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy) — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 02:03:00 +0000

Art imitates life, life imitates art. Not surprisingly, artists tend to say that art has more influence on life than the other way around.

As Oscar Wilde put it: "Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life... Life holds the mirror up to Art, and either reproduces some strange type imagined by a painter or sculptor, or realises in fact what has been dreamed in fiction."

Dostoevsky put art on higher pedestal: "At first, art imitates life. Then life will imitate art. Then life will find its very existence from the arts."

I've tended to go with "life is art", or at least a life lived fully. But even in saying that, I'm suggesting that one has some creative influence in their own lives and that life isn't something that merely happens to them. There's no room to be artistically creative in a deterministic universe.

But... I was surprised to find that many of the guys who would think of life as deterministic, ie. not something you create in any sort of artistic way, physicists no less, are profoundly influenced by art. Example, one of my favorite physicists, Niels Bohr, who applied his love of cubism in creating his model of the inner workings of the atom. Bohr said, "When it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry." [Read "The Future of Science... Is Art?"]

So there you have it. If the people who delve so far into how the universe works are forced to come away describing it in poetic terms, I guess life and art are so intermeshed as to be indistinguishable after all. Life is art.

And the bells were ringing out for Christmas Day!

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy) — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 15:05:00 +0000

The Pogues - Fairytale of New York (lyrics)

Merry Christmas!

(Thanks to Tracie)

The Thing

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy) — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 03:13:00 +0000

When I was a kid, I used to borrow my folks video camera and make short stop-action movies with my G.I. Joes. I thought I was pretty creative, and I guess I was for my age, but I never made anything quite like this. This is the coolest stop-action movie I've ever seen.

John Carpenter's The Thing, remade with G.I. Joes:

(How sad is it that I not only recognize most of the characters here, I can probably tell you their code names.)

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer needs therapy, or zen

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy) — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 02:04:00 +0000

All of the other reindeer, used to laugh and call him names. They never let poor Rudolph join in any reindeer games. Then one foggy Christmas Eve, Santa came to say: "Rudolph, with your nose so bright, won't you guide my sleigh tonight?" Then how the reindeer loved him, as they shouted out with glee: "Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer, you'll go down in history!"

Dude, that is such the wrong message to be sending out to kids : )

So here you have this reindeer-kid, Rudolph, who's tortured by all the other kids at the schoolyard because his nose is off-color. Not only is he laughed at and called names by his peers, he's a social outcast. He's rejected. Then along comes The Man who says, "Don't worry Rudolph. I'm gonna make you a star!" What message are we sending here? Only after some big shot comes along and signs him to a sleigh-pulling gig, then is it OK to be Rudolph? Only after some dude with authority says, "He's cool", then it's socially acceptable, and we can love him, and we can shout with glee? No wonder there's millions of social rejects on YouTube crying for attention, hoping to be noticed.

Poor Rudolph needs some serious therapy!

Where's the story about the misfit red-nosed reindeer who gets laughed at and called names, but instead of enlisting in the carnival sideshow with the other freaks, decides that the real problem lies with what's considered "social norms", rather than his own peculiar shiny-nosed condition? Instead of searching for social acceptance, the reindeer-kid comes to terms with his own existence in a zen-like fashion: What nose? What red? What reindeer, even, but a spark of awareness that has no form?

I mean, the sleigh-pulling contract is nice too, don't get me wrong. But I think it'd be better for Rudolph in the long run if he sought his own acceptance rather than seeking the approval of others.

In the stormy east-wind straining

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy) — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 13:31:00 +0000

In the stormy east-wind straining,
The pale yellow woods were waning,
The broad stream in its banks complaining,
Heavily the low sky raining
Over tower'd Camelot;

Down she came and found a boat
Beneath a willow left afloat,
And round and round the prow she wrote
The Lady of Shalott.

And down the river's dim expanse
Like some bold seer in a trance,
Seeing all his own mischance —
With a glassy countenance
Did she look to Camelot.

At the closing of the day
She loosed the chain, and down she lay;
The broad stream bore her far away,
The Lady of Shalott.

Excerpt from Lord Alfred Tennyson's "The Lady of Shalott" (1833). The painting (also called "The Lady of Shalott") is by John William Waterhouse (1888).

A small glittering thing

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy) — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 00:28:00 +0000

While I'm on a quote-kick, might as well toss out another existential fav:

So we reach into the raging chaos, and we pluck some small glittering thing, and we cling to it, and tell ourselves that it has meaning, and that the world is good, and we are not evil, and we will all go home in the end.

- Anne Rice, The Tale of the Body Thief

Endless becoming

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy) — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 14:45:00 +0000

I can't recall what book I jotted this from, but I found it in some notes I was throwing out:

Later in his philosophical development the idea of freedom became Sarte's main theme. Man, beginning in the loathsome emptiness of his existence, creates his essence -- his self, his being -- through his choices that he freely makes. Hence his being is never fixed. He is always becoming, and if it were not for the contingency of death he would never end. Nor would his philosophy. "Existentialists," wrote Irish philosopher Arland Ussher, "have a notable
difficulty in finishing their books: of necessity, for their philosophy --
staying close to the movement of life -- can have no finality."

Web tech politics

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy) — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 14:55:00 +0000

One of the reasons I try to avoid political discussions is because, I feel, many of the national policy issues being discussed are unsolvable problems. I'm pragmatic. If a question doesn't have an answer, I move on to the next question. Am I concerned how the candidates in the upcoming 2008 Election (less than a month away as of this post) will react to the serious problems facing this country? Of course I am. I just don't know which of the policy-sets being discussed are better. They both have their benefits and drawbacks. I'm well informed on the issues and the proposed solutions, but I haven't really taken a stand. To me, neither stands out as better, they're just different.

Plus, most of the things being discussed don't directly effect the things I'm concerned about, right now, at this moment. For example, my tech interests. I'm extremely skeptical that the governing bodies and talking heads are even qualified to examine the deeply complex issues involved in making web related technology policy; I'm not even sure the role US government plays considering it's a worldwide issue. How do you even define "jurisdiction" in a global system? In any case, it seems to me that politicians can only pass laws in the abstract, applying old ideas that involve the telephone, television, radio, and print industries rather than addressing specific issues involved in something entirely new. The web, while tied to all that old stuff, has qualities that are unprecidented. I just don't think those guys in Congress entirely get it. I don't trust them not to screw it up.

Web technology doesn't get much airplay on the campaign trail. It's far too arcane for the masses to grasp, and, well, the candidates are looking to get elected by those masses. Still, the issue is of vital importance and it really should be addressed more indepth.

I try to stay out of politics because the issues I'm directly interested in are those covered by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (and sadly few others). It is my overriding political philosophy that if you keep electronic discourse open and running smoothly, all the other political issues have a better chance of actually being solved. EFF helps facilitate that as an advocacy group for digital freedoms.

As an example of how web tech plays into politics, take the domestic politics issue that does get airplay: The financial bailout of Wall Street. Here, transparency came to the forefront. Anyone with a desire to do so could pour through the actual bill that was passed and read exactly what was put into the bailout. In fact, for the first time in its history, the House of Representative's website was slowed to a crawl as millions of people logged on to read its contents. House.gov was forced to implement a digital traffic cop to handle all the requests. Massive access to unfiltered information like this was simply not available in old-school political discourse. Examining the bill right away just wasn't something any individual could do.

Web technology policies, I feel, aren't just fundamental, they're overriding in today's political landscape. We really need to put more focus on how congressional leaders are handling this.

Now, I was pleased to see that the presidential candidates did manage to take a stand on the issue of Net Neutrality. Popular Mechanics had a great article on this, and I give them props for echoing that these important issues are being overlooked in the race to the White House. Obama and McCain's stance on Net Neutrality are vastly different, and I'm not going to tell you which one to support. I will tell you that you should familiarize yourself with the issue and the candidate's positions, because however issues like Net Neutrality are finally resolved, it effects each and every one of us.

Should we be 'mad as hell'?

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy) — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 23:11:00 +0000

I don't usually post politically since I try to remain moderate, but then again we are in the middle of an election cycle. And there's some crazy stuff going on in Washington, Wall Street, and even on the streets of small-town America, what with the whole country seemingly on the verge of financial collapse. Eeek, to put it mildly. In any case, I'm not "mad as hell" like the guy in this clip, but having seen it on another website and struck by how remarkably it fits in today's climate, I decided to repost it here.

Howard Beale, from the 1976 film Network.

Should we be mad as hell?