recent findings

uncanny valley

jluke — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 04:19:41 GMT

Why does it seem to be easier to model a realistic breast than a realistic eye in a face having a real emotion?

scenes from a Christmas Tree Store

jluke — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 15:21:27 GMT

Young Mom pushing baby stroller: "I have no say in any decision in my household."

Older Woman walking with her: "And what's wrong with that?"

democracy

jluke — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 12:01:54 GMT

My polling place (6th Precinct, 500 South Ave, "Thunderdome") was a comedy of errors.

Polls opened at 6am, so I woke up at 5:45 and headed down. My next-door neighbor and I were first and second in line. The custodian was late to open the room, so the workers were still getting set up well into 6:30.

There were two machines, the old tab-and-handle style, and a new electronic touch screen that looked like a high-volume photocopier. There was much argument about where to place the machine. It was finally determined that the cord was a trip hazard, so the best orientation would be for the touchscreen to face the line of waiting voters.

The two little old ladies setting up the touchscreen were having a really hard time of it.

"It says we put the RFID tag here when the beeping stops."
[BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP]
"I can't hear the beeping."
"It's still beeping."
"It says Administrator Denied."
"Oh...we have to call this number..."

Just as I was next in line and the room was filling up, the lady running the show announced, "Oh! I forgot to tell everyone, you have the option of voting electronically! But it takes 15 minutes, and your vote doesn't get counted until a week later!"

I asked her what the good part was. She just laughed and said "...yeah..."

wow nature

jluke — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 11:06:01 GMT

"At birth, male ceratioids are already equipped with extremely well
developed olfactory organs that detect scents in the water. When it is mature,
the male's digestive system degenerates, making him incapable of feeding
independently, which necessitates his quickly finding a female anglerfish to
prevent his death. The sensitive olfactory organs help the male to detect the
pheromones that signal the proximity of a female anglerfish. When he finds a
female, he bites into her skin, and releases an enzyme that digests the skin
of his mouth and her body, fusing the pair down to the blood-vessel level.

The male then atrophies into nothing more than a pair of gonads, which releases
sperm in response to hormones in the female's bloodstream indicating egg
release. This extreme sexual dimorphism ensures that, when the female is ready
to spawn, she has a mate immediately available."

operation zero tolerance

jluke — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 20:22:35 GMT

Hero of the week: The officer who noticed that my car's inspection was lapsed, and left a ticket neatly folded in the door handle of the car parked on the street outside of my apartment at 6:10 in the morning.

freedom costs 44.62

jluke — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 06:49:32 GMT

http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=5913539M

comfort, vitality, humanity and mutanity

jluke — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 18:33:21 GMT

Spider-Man's web shooters represent a ridiculously advanced knowledge of materials science. So why didn't more of his solutions to problems involve chemistry and garage industrial design? He could have been a blue collar Bruce Wayne, making cottage industry spida-rangs out of his spare office.

Maybe all the science stuff flew out of his head the moment the radioactive spider spit rearranged his nucleic acids. Or maybe he just got old and settled down and got soft. Stuck with what worked. Web nets and gymnastics all day, with the Spidey-sense to help handle any gaps in the plan. Why mess with it?

Maybe all the brightest did their best work in their early-to-mid-twenties because that is the point at which they were just hustling to survive. High school guidance counseling is bankrupt if it doesn't cover a broad-strokes overview of risk management.

Writer's Block: AAAGH!

jluke — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 15:24:56 GMT

When I was a little kid, I always had the same nightmare that Abraham Lincoln's corpse had risen from the grave and was walking around looking at me.

r.i.p. utah phillips

jluke — Sun, 25 May 2008 02:34:24 GMT

"I have seen that our best presidents were the do-nothing presidents. When you have a president who does things, we are all in serious trouble. I guarantee that if I am elected, I will take over the White House, hang out, shoot pool, scratch my ass, and not do a damn thing."

thoughts from julian diubbell's lecture

jluke — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 12:29:01 GMT

dude wrote a rape in cyberspace just when I was coming up in LambdaMOO, dealing with my own producer/consumer relationship to technology, coming down firmly on the producer side, and getting set on this career path (for some values of career).

anyway, dibbell is no longer looking at MOOs (I guess digital ethnographers have passed the torch to the digital historians). now he's on to gold farmers and toy markets.

he spent a day gold farming in china. something weird happened at the end of the 12 hour shift: a portion of the workers used their 2-3 hours of leisure time to
keep playing warcraft. what's that about? love of work?

I took two ideas away from his final thoughts:

1) the "protestant work ethic" (labor gets you into heaven) is just the oldschool way to say "leveling up"

2) there's something funny about addictive relationships to our work. we have a ministry in the city that uses recovering meth addicts to repair bicycles ("those according to their ability...")

if our work has meaning for us, maybe we say we love it?

and addiction is another positive feedback loop that can look like love?

so maybe the litmus test for a healthy relationship (to work or whatever) is one that loves you back, or moves you forward in proportion to the energy you invest?

"the future is here, it's just not evenly distributed"

jluke — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 07:11:46 GMT

(video reblogged from http://dalasverdugo.com/ from wreck and salvage's feed on vimeo.com)

Normally I would search for a Marshall McLuhan quote to go along with this, but it's late.

How about a Laurie Anderson lyric instead...

"So hold me, Mom, in your long arms.
In your automatic arms. Your electronic arms.
In your arms.
So hold me, Mom, in your long arms.
Your petrochemical arms. Your military arms.
In your electronic arms."

- o superman (for massenet), 1981

the judd apatow fried gold calculator

jluke — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 17:47:52 GMT

Will This Judd Apatow Project Be Any Good?

i had some car trouble in october/november

jluke — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 13:17:28 GMT

On the way back from Dryden, the CEL started flashing. This is the universal sign of GET OFF THE ROAD.

If I had to be honest, I would say I had let myself get sloppy with the oil change interval. 10k seems completely reasonable for synthetic, right?

Now that I change my own, it's easier to keep a proper schedule.

There was also some weird pressure issue with the oil return. When I opened the spark plug cover, everything was saturated with oil and it had gotten into a couple of plug chambers. What a mess.

Anyway, here's what a failed valve looks like:

In the end I decided to fix it. As long as the car lasts two more years without a major repair, the economics bear it out.

jluke — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 19:17:34 GMT

I wake up at 5:30 this morning, thinking "basement cat is going to end up a smelly corpse unless I do something." So I grab a tin of albacore and a can opener and head downstairs.

Back to Thursday morning, when I realized I wasn't getting hot showers. I was down on my hands and knees in the basement trying to keep a splinter of wood lit long enough for the water heater's pilot light to catch. Something skittered off a box behind me. I swung the flashlight around just in time to see a little gray furry thing running into the middle of a pile of abandoned furniture and mattresses. "Awesome," I am thinking, "there are rats down here. Good to know."

Friday morning, I realize I've lit the water heater but not set the temperature to HOT. I put on mechanic's denim and work gloves and head down into rat country. After setting the temp, I swing the flashlight up to where the thing jumped from the day before, and it's looking back at me. A cautious-looking cat, not too feral. "Huh," I think. "If it can get in, it can probably get out. See you later, basement cat."

It takes about five days for the appropriate Voight-Kampff empathy response to kick in. So down I go again with the tuna this morning, and sure enough the fucker is still up on top of the heating ducts, maybe catching an occasional mouse if it's really lucky, but probably not.

The basement door is heavy enough to close by itself, so I prop it open with a toothpick and set the tuna can on the steps; close enough to smell enticing, but far enough away that the whole cat has to come through the door to get any fish.

It's not a have-a-heart trap, but here's hoping it's enough to get the thing out. And close the damned door so my water heater can stop working overtime. Come on, basement cat.

bertrand russell

jluke — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 14:09:08 GMT

"The whole problem with the world is that fools
and fanatics are always so certain of themselves,
but wiser people so full of doubts."
- bert

jluke — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 15:40:20 GMT

flowchart, n. & v.:

        [From flow "to ripple down in rich profusion, as hair" + chart
        "a cryptic hidden-treasure map designed to mislead the uninitiated."]

        1. n. The solution, if any, to a class of Mascheroni construction
        problems in which given algorithms require geometrical representation
        using only the 35 basic ideograms of the ANSI template.  

        2. n. Neronic doodling while the system burns.  
        
        3. n. A low-cost substitute for wallpaper.  

        4. n.  The innumerate misleading the illiterate.  "A thousand pictures 
        is worth ten lines of code." -- The Programmer's Little Red Vade Mecum, 
        Mao Tse T'umps.  

        5. v.intrans. To produce flowcharts with no particular object in mind.  

        6. v.trans. To obfuscate (a problem) with esoteric cartoons.
               

                     -- Stan Kelly-Bootle, "The Devil's DP Dictionary"

independence day

jluke — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 15:56:57 GMT

On the fourth of July, I woke up at 6am and loaded a small iPod with all of the music for Jackie and Bob's wedding. I wrapped it with as many different cables as I could think might be needed, put it in an antistatic bag, and drove it over to hand off to Beth 30 minutes before she left for the airport.

Aaron, Amanda, and Joey Mac came over at around 1pm. We fired up the grill and watched an episode of Sopranos that Aaron had missed (S06E15, Junior's "one flew over the cuckoo's nest" character arc).

I charred the hots. The tofu pups came out alright.

Someone had the idea to go to the Finger Lakes racetrack to play video slots. Joey forgot his ID, so we went upstairs to watch the horses for a while. Derby winner Funny Cide was in the race, so the crowd was huge. The energy was amazing. I had no idea what was happening, but everyone was on their feet at the end. Little kids were jumping up in the air; other ones were throwing race forms on the ground in disgust like they were in a movie.

Joe took off his hat to look his age, and on the second try we made it through to the slots. I tried to read the faces of the people bathed in the glow of the machines. Most of them were vacant or distracted. There was one old woman next to me who had an amazing run on a $0.02 Spam-themed machine. Her bonus round had her pointing at little cans on the touchscreen. These contained either $0.80 bonuses, or more cans of Spam. She noticed that I was mesmerized by her run, and cackled "Pretty good, huh? And my family says it's time to go!" She smelled like those adult undergarments that react to the presence of fluid by generating their own perfume. I think her total bonus was worth about 10 bucks.

Coincidentally, 10 dollars is what I played for the day. On machines where I didn't lose the whole dollar, I cashed out when I had doubled my investment. After about an hour of play, I finished with $10.62 -- almost a can of soda ahead.

I can see how people could get addicted to it, but it's kind of a stupid vice. I guess they all are.

When it got dark, there was also the ritual lighting of small incendiaries. All in all, it was a fine Fourth.

gertrude stein

jluke — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 18:50:00 GMT

"Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense."
- Gerty

things that rock my world today

jluke — Mon, 21 May 2007 14:57:56 GMT

1) French press, 33 fl oz. I have a camping model made of Lexan. The coffee it makes tastes fine, and I can't break it.

2) Nicaraguan coffee from the public market, 1 lb. It smells awesome.

3) Thermos "The Rock", 1L. It keeps stuff hot all day.

These guidelines for using the French press are pretty good.

Operation Seize the Means of Production : Mission Accomplished.

The Free Market. Literally.

jluke — Thu, 17 May 2007 16:00:34 GMT

Nice: NYSE moves to Linux.

I had a t-shirt idea last night that had Adam Smith in ninja gear with "INVISIBLE HAND CLAN" somewhere on there.

Of course it would be in Frank Miller style.

make sirius minor

jluke — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 01:21:40 GMT

katamari terriers on Vimeo

which american accent meme

jluke — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 19:02:10 GMT

This site has a much finer-grained breakdown of the differences in spoken American English.

ICE DAY

jluke — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 11:44:19 GMT

Work is closed. Called all my people on the phone tree, back to bed.

Noon update -- apparently I needed the sleep.

the secret lives of paperbacks

jluke — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 18:44:30 GMT

The most widely-travelled book I have ever released to bookcrossing has finally met its demise.

So it goes.

weekend stuff

jluke — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 17:35:25 GMT

santa dance
Originally uploaded by jparryhill.

The photo at right is old, but it's one of my favorite shots from the summer.

Dulcie's clay collective sent me an email about Metro Justice's Alternative Fair, so I checked that out on Saturday. It was a very crunchy event where I kept running into people I know, from librarians to former student employees. Rochester remains a comfortably small city.

From there, I hit the Public Market. It's cold, but parking is easier now that it's down to the diehards. Never trust a quick sale on asparagus. It will transmute to slimy crap during the ride home.

I stopped at Jeff's house to help move a cast-iron clawfoot tub down three flights of stairs. Mostly, I was on sled-building duty. There were a few seconds of "why am I bracing this track in the gravity path of a falling tub?" duty, followed by "keeping one foot on the windowsill in case I have to get up and out of the way in a hurry" duty.

That night, I saw The Hill, an adaptation by Janis of Masters' Spoon River Anthology. The small space was used well. Everyone gave an awesome performance; it's a pleasure to watch honest-to-God sweat and blood theatre. One of the actresses used me as furniture; happy to be of service.

I was really pleased that the entire audience gave it its proper respect and attention. People not treating performance like TV is a big deal.