Cleek

This space for rent

2006-04-25T13:41:00.000-04:00

Cleek has moved...

I'm now over here (http://cleek.lunarpages.com/blogs/)

Update your bookmarks and all that.

Cleek

2006-04-24T14:57:00.000-04:00

Since Blogger was dead for most of the morning, I decided to waste some time looking at alternative blogging options. I installed a copy of WordPress on the site I use to hold the images for Cleek, and started to configure it. Looks pretty good. It's definitely more powerful than Blogger, and I like the idea of having the whole application under my control - unchanging unless I change it myself, unlike Blogger and it's constant upgrade/breakage cycle. And, after Blogger's extended downtime today, I like the idea of having it on my own servers, for reliability - I know how important this site is to you, my handful of occasional readers.

But then blogger came back up. And then my other site died - not just my site, but the whole server, and all their other servers, including the one that hosts my business site, and the helpdesk site, and the main page for the hosting company. Poof, gone. That's why all my pictures are gone right now...

So much for that theory.

I still might do the move.

Start Your iPods

2006-04-24T09:50:00.000-04:00

This work week, the iPods starts with:

Robyn Hitchcock - Flesh Cartoons
Pink Floyd - Pigs On The Wing (Pt 2)
Pavement - Forklift
Belly - Untogether
Gillian Welch - I Made A Lover's Prayer (four days till MerleFest 06!)
Pavement - Pueblo
Big Star - Mod Lang
Cassandra Wilson - Easy Rider
Rogue Wave - Every Moment
Rogue Wave - "Man - Revolutionary!"

Very nice for a Monday morning (except maybe that first Pavement song - that's a silly little bit of noisy nonsense).

...and if this post ever shows up, it means Blogger is working again.

Monday Cat Blogging

2006-04-24T07:23:00.002-04:00

Nikon D100, 18-35mm

The 50 Worst Albums Ever

2006-04-21T10:36:00.000-04:00

OMG OMG OMG! A list! A music list!

Respectful Insolence shows us Q Magazine's "The 50 Worst Albums Ever":

I suspect the theme of that is really "Bad albums from otherwise decent big name artists, and some novelties". Obviously, you could find some horrors in the discount bin at any record store that would make anything up there look good.

The only one of those I own is Beck's Midnight Vultures, but I own (or have owned) dozens of records that are far worse than it.

The $30 paragraph

2006-04-21T09:31:00.000-04:00

Scot at Izzle! Izzle pfaff! muses about flying to Utah. In the middle, he writes:

Wyoming

Counting the five dollar words, that's a $30 paragraph - in my estimation. Not only that, I fucking love it. I wish I thought myself capable of coming up with a phrase like "a gerund of a state". Damn you Scot. Damn you all to Utah.

The spoonful of oyster sorbet in particular was magical

2006-04-20T16:39:00.000-04:00

I thought this, the Tasting Menu from a restaraunt called "The Fat Duck", was a joke. It reads like a Monty Python sketch. Some of the choices:

Snail Porridge
Salmon Poached with Liquorice
Mango and Douglas Fir Puree
Smoked Bacon and Egg Ice Cream

Crazy stuff. But, I was wrong; it's a real place. And not only is it a real place...

Best Restaurant on the Planet

here

Well then. I should get out more.

Ouch

2006-04-19T17:10:00.000-04:00

Gilbert Gottfried has been declared less sexy than Osama Bin Laden.

The unthinkable

2006-04-17T12:27:00.000-04:00

I just punched my iPod.

Two Fridays ago, I accidentally dropped it as I was walking out of my office. It fell on carpet, and when I got it home, it seemed to be working OK, so I thought everything was fine. Then, last week, back at work, while it's playing I noticed little sounds in the background - like little electronic crickets, steadily chirping.

After a few day's worth of poking, I discovered that if I push down on the case a little bit, the noise stops. It's not a grounding issue, because I can get the noise to stop by putting a full coffee cup on top of the iPod, too. I also found that I can get the crickets to stop for a long time if I thump it just right with my finger. So, I'm guessing there's something slightly loose inside the iPod.

Today, I couldn't get the thump to work. So I beat upon my iPod with my fist - just once. It didn't care. And now I hate what I've become - an iPod abuser. Such a long journey from the iPod worshipper I started out as.

Start Your iPods

2006-04-17T09:42:00.000-04:00

This work week we start with an uninspiring sampling of 3rd-tier songs:

The Minus 5 - Out There On The Maroon
The Police - Contact
And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead... - Days Of Being Wild
Califone - Apple
REM - Sitting Still
John Coltrane - Ogunde (live). *skip* I don't need no screeching free jazz at 9:00am on a Monday
Robyn Hitchcock - We're Gonna Live In The Trees
Sugar - If I Can't Change Your Mind
Moby Grape - Omaha
Mudhoney - Need

... except that REM song - love that one.

Monday Cat Blogging

2006-04-17T07:26:00.000-04:00

Nikon D100, 18-35mm

Origin of Noodleous doubleous

2006-04-14T15:56:00.000-04:00

Class, your assignment over the weekend is to read the following paper: "Origin of the Novel Species Noodleous doubleous: Evidence for Intelligent Design", by Thomas D. Schneider, Ph.D.

Abstract

₂

There may be a quiz on Monday.

Ah ha! A Twist!

2006-04-13T18:03:00.000-04:00

The Quincunx, in a nutshell:

There are only 30 people in all of England; and no matter how you choose them, in every group of five people, three will know each other, two will be working to kill or rob one of the others, and one will have two names; and it's been that way for a hundred years.

The plot is absurdly complex (and not just because it's tightly bound to the intricacies of 19th C. British estate and inheritance laws and procedure!) ; and every few pages the main characters have to take time out from implementing their idiotic schemes and explain the whole thing to each other - because even they can't keep it straight without periodic recitation. But when they do that, you can be assured that a Big Plot Twist is about to happen ! And that means everything they just explained will need to be revised ! Frankly, I think they probably know that's exactly what will happen and are just helping refresh the reader's memory so he'll know where to put the new information when it arrives.

But after more than 700 extremely dense pages (dense in typeface and in language), the author ends it without answering the Big Question. And I'm all like ... Now you pull out the subtlety? After 700 pages of melodramatic wankery, you decide ambiguity is the way to end this thing? What The Fuck?

But, at least I got to learn that there was a brisk trade in human flesh (from stolen corpses. for meat.) in mid-1800's London.

(And, you should really read the link I stuffed up there. It brings a whole new dimension to bad writing ! )

Sprague Lake, CO

2006-04-12T08:12:00.000-04:00

Nikon N80, 28-80mm, Fuji Superia 400, Grayscaled

(repost)

Rolling Rice Krispies

2006-04-11T13:57:00.000-04:00

news from me has a link to a video of a Rice Krispies commercial from 1964, the music for which was written and recorded by the Rolling stones.

Caesar demands a building permit

2006-04-10T13:16:00.000-04:00

The Pensacola News Journal has a story:

tee hee.

(via The Panda's Thumb

Start Your iPods

2006-04-10T10:40:00.000-04:00

The iPod starts the work week with:

Wilhelm Kempff - Kalviersonate #23 op 57 no 2. A little of the old Ludwig Von to start the week. Ahh.
Stephen Malkmus - Ramp of Death. "Ramp" is one of my favorite words.
Grandaddy - So You'll Aim Towards The Sky
And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead... - How Near, How Far
The Minus 5 - Original Luke
Codeine - New Year's
REM - Moral Kiosk
Led Zeppelin - Trampled Under Foot
Elliot Smith - Pictures of Me
David Bowie - Fashion. Oooh bop.
Bonus : Wilhelm Kempff - Kalviersonate #14 op 27 no 2. a.k.a. the "Moonlight" sonata. While these Beethoven sonatas (and more) have been on the iPod for a year, today is the first day any has appeared on my Monday list. And to get two of them! Ah yummy.

And off we go...

Ah, rational discourse

2006-04-10T08:33:00.001-04:00

Digby's sidekick, tristero, wrote a little post where he says:

or one faked by this administration

(my emphasis)

I thought this was a bit of a stretch. It's one thing to think BushCo is corrupt, dishonest and criminal - it's quite another to think they'd be complicit in a "major terrorist attack in America". Of course, that was enough to bring out the "Bush was involved in 9/11!" gang, guns a-blazing: "explosives in the towers!", "the alleged hijackers are still alive!" Now, nobody seems to have any actual evidence that BushCo was involved in 9/11 - all they can point to are coincidences or things that are not completely understood; and those places, they claim, are where we find The Hand of Bush in action! Like Intelligent Design, with Bush as the designer, things are just too perfect for them to have happened without the hand of their favorite supernaturally-clever designer. And so Bush is both the evil mastermind and the incompetent boob - he's genius enough to have brought down the WTC while making it look, to most of the world, like the work of a handful of angry young Middle-Easterners (and evil enough to have done it at all) - he's even got Bin Laden and the rest of Al-Q playing along with the charade. And now Bush is supposedly going to start a war with Iran which will end up a horrible mess because, ya know, he's an incompetent boob - as proved by how he's handled everything else during his Presidency.

The designer invents the vast complex web of Life On Earth, and for kicks, arranges the Universe to make it look like it's billions of years old when it's really only 6,000 - but he can't come up with a reasonable human immune system or a digestive tract that can handle beans.

You just have to have faith that he's behind it all.

And for doubting that Bush is both a supernatural genius and a bumbling idiot at the same time, I get the following comment:

Cleek. Listen closely. You'll be the first one clubbed and left hanging from the lamppost.
Now, I can't tell if that's a death threat towards me or not. If it is, I guess that means death threats aren't just for right-wing wackos, the leftiest lefties are more than happy to get down in the gutter, too. If it's some kind of warning that I'll "be the first one clubbed" because I don't see the grand conspiracy, then... well, OK - if you say so.

Either way, what a fucking crazy world...

Monday Cat Blogging

2006-04-10T08:33:00.000-04:00

Nikon D100, 18-35mm

I'm trying to fucking sleep!

Fish out of water

2006-04-08T21:37:00.000-04:00

Wife's in Vegas at a bachelorette party (oy). So, I was over at some friend's house last night. They had just come back from Panama (while we were in Japan) and they hd some rum that was made for sipping, not for mixing. Here I thought I was a man of the world, and I never even considered that rum was something anyone would ever drink in the absence of some sort of whipped fruit mixture. "So, you just... sip it?" I forget exactly what the rum was called (Payrat?) , but it was absolutely delicious. It was as good as the tequila I had in Tokyo. Among other things, we talked about fish - my expereince wish raw fish in Japan and their's with fried in Panama. They told me I should go to the fish market at the farmer's market in Raleigh, for the freshest fish around. So, I went there.

It took a bit of wandering and driving to find it. I took a stroll through the Nahunta Pork Center, where I got to see all the kinds of pork parts people eat - hearts? But I finally found found the seafood place. It was a smallish building, across the street from the farmer's market proper, with a gigantic counter full of whole fresh fish. They had fillets of cod, whiting and tilapia (which confused me cause I though tilapia was a south american fish), but 80% of it was. I was the only white person in the place. I puzzled that over for a bit: is it only white people who like their fish filleted ? Are whole Croakers and Rockfish something boring ol' white America hasn't caught onto yet? Why can't I find whiting at Whole Foods ? So many tough questions... Before I left, I was this close to buying a chunk of cod, even though I don't think cod has anything to do with the NC coast, when I remembered: when the wife is out of town, and you don't have to work in the morning, it's time for ribeye and alcohol! And so it was written, and so it was done, medium rare. Tomorrow I'll eat a stupid fish.

So, off to the fancy supermarket to find a nice steak. On the way I listened to the Arctic Monkeys, Bloc Party and the Libertines - all relatively new British bands. Before I'd heard any of them, I'd heard on various blogs there's some controversy about who's more "authentic": the Libertines or the Arctic Monkeys. I considered myself lucky to not know WTF the discussion was about, at the time. Now, I'm happy to be able to appreciate them on their own merits, completely outside the context of British popularized opinion. I don't have a favorite of the three - they all have their individual strengths and weaknesses. They're all good with the top down and nothing specific to do.

So, I bought a monster ribeye, a bottle of wine and a potato, and had myself a feast - watching VH1 Classic and FUSE (which I guess is MTV for angry young men). They had a full half hour of White Stripes! Now, I like the White Stripes, but I had no idea they were actually really popular with the "kids". And I had no idea that they had a dozen videos - I'd only ever seen one, and that came with the iTunes download of their latest album. I don't even know where you'd find a video these days, MTV is all game shows. But, Jack White talked and talked between 15-second clips of the videos, and made himself sound a little flakey, while Meg White sat there like a lump. I guess there's a whole philsophy behind the red/white/black colro scheme and the "third man" name and all this other junk - yadayadayayda. But, I don't buy their records for their interview skills. They do a great job of stripping away all the fuiller and getting down to the guts. It's a totally different scene from what was going on the channel above (which filled-in during commerical) - the BlingBling rap channel, I think. So, I was a bit surprised to find that the Strips were popular enough to warrant a whole half-hour special.

I guess I should get out more... ?

On the other hand, we went to a club a few weeks ago (pre-Japan), where they have a jukebox that can download songs off the internet - so you can get almost anything you want. My party hogged the jukebox, played mostly speed metal and classic punk for hours. I played The New Pornographers, Pixies, White Stripes and the Arctic Monkeys and they were met with a general shrug. During the 20 minute live vesion f Inna Gada Davida (no shit, the guy who played the Misfits and Metallica played that thing) some 20 year old girl came up to me and asked when we'd be done so she could to play some "classic 80's hair metal".

Can't keep up I Can't keep up
I Can't keep up I Can't keep up
I'm Out of step, with the world.

(yeah, I finally bought some Minor Threat of my own)

Love that wine

Where were we...

2006-04-07T16:36:00.000-04:00

Oh yeah, we were in Harajuku and the Imperial gardens. That means we're about to finish off our last full day in Japan.

We hit "Old Tokyo", which we read was supposed to preserve the character of the old city. I guess that means a crowded raucous pedestrian shopping mall, where you can get any kind of junk you want:

Sony P7

...

Sony P7

We were pretty much shopped-out by then, though. So, back to the hotel for a nap for the wife and some blogging for myself (I probably did the Kyoto post then). Then it was out for our final night.

We went to the last section of Tokyo we wanted to see: Roppongi. It was described in the Lonely Plant book as almost a "mardi gras" atmosphere. Well, it was nothing like that. It was another tall, bustling district, jam-packed full of shops and restaraunts. No floats or beads. But, it was hopping.

When we walked up out of the subway station, a serious windstorms was blowing through, and we didn't know exactly where we were or where we needed to go to get to ther restaraunt we were planning on: a Thai place, some blocks from the subway station. So, we flailed around in the bitter-cold wind for a bit before giving up on the Thai place and trying to find a spot a bit closer. We wandered around for a while but didn't find anything that grabbed us. Well, there was a store called, ahem, Freak Brothers that was pretty interesting - it more about the lifestyle of the Freak Brothers than the comics. But after that, we still needed some food. There was this combo:

Sony P7

...but we declined.

Finally, desperate, we decided to go to an Irish pub (the fourth). It was crowed, small, tacky and deafeningly loud. We lasted less than a minute before slouching out the door, cold, hungry and cranky. After a bit of indecision we decided on a place that had "grilled beef" on its otherwise all-Kanji sign. It turned out to be a Japanese "BBQ" place, where you sit at a counter with a big hole in it, they bring a bucket of hot coals, and you order small plates of raw food that you then cook yourself. It was both fun, and delicious! Success!

Then we went to the Geronimo Shot Bar:

Sony P7

They serve shots.

Sony P7

We had two each. Which wasn't anywhere near enough to get us on the monthly list (I think the leader was up over 200). The all-time leader was in the 2,000's, if I recall correctly. I think the shots were a little weak.

Then it was off to do karaoke, Japanese-style. That's where you rent a private room and get to sing whatever you want. They had a little notice that said "Big Echo is not a shot bar!" Don't know why they needed that. Since I utterly hate my voice, I refuse to sing. So, I stuck my wife doing it all by herself.

Sony P7

It was still fun. Then, it was off to find another bar. We wandered for a bit, then my wife spotted a sign for a bar called Agave, a tequila bar. They had four hundred different tequilas:

Sony P7

...

Sony P7

...and Cuban cigars.

Sony P7

Delicious! If the next day wasn't the day of the plane, we would've stayed all night.

So, back to the hotel...

I woke up at dawn and tried to get some sunrise pictures, but I was too sleepy to bother with trying to hold the camera steady.

Nikon D100, 18-35mm

.

And then we woke up, bummed around for the morning and started our trip home. We got to hang out in the first class lounge while waiting for the plane (free booze and chips!). Then an 11-hour flight to Chicago, on which I watched a surprisingly touching little documentary about the New York Dolls reunion.

When we got to Chicago, we immedately noticed the same thing: Americans are really fat. Then we noticed that McDonalds' hamburgers are really salty.

And three hours later, we were home again.

Imperial Gardens

2006-04-05T10:59:00.000-04:00

Look, it's a miniature Tokyo!

Nikon D100, LensBaby

No, that's just the view from the hotel room through the magical LensBaby.

Off to the Imperial Gardens! A couple of quick subway rides gets us from our hotel to the Gardens. It's the beginning of cherry blossom season, and the place is busy. Maybe it's always busy, I dunno.

Here's the entrance:

Nikon D100, 28-80mm

The little sign said this was a dolphin. I think it looks more like a carp (those little eyebrows are on all the carp in the ponds):

Nikon D100, 18-35mm

The Imperial Palace (which the gardens are part of) is right in the middle of the city, so it's tough to get pictures of this beautifully-done garden without getting little bits of the city at the same time:

Nikon D100, 18-35mm

and:

Nikon D100, 18-35mm

But, if you focus on little tiny bits:

Nikon D100, 75-240mm

Or if you're willing to put a lof of sky in the shot:

Nikon D100, 18-35mm

You can do it.

It's a very nice place. There are lots of cherry and plum trees; there are trees representing all of the prefectures; everything is sculpted right right, everything is manicured just right. The small pathways through the gardens are rubberized, so your footsteps are silent. The fish are happy. Very nice.

More to come...

Schrodinger’s War

2006-04-04T13:10:00.000-04:00

Or, the state in which we are both at war and not at war.

The final days

2006-04-04T07:48:00.000-04:00

From Hiroshima, we took the train to Tokyo, where we would squander our last three nights in Japan on cheap booze and fast women. It was a 5 hour trip, made even longer by the fact that we could only get seats on the smoking car for the Osaka-Tokyo half. Smoking is ubiquitous in Japan; even the non-smoking sections of restaraunts are more like "nobody is smoking in this section right row". Nonetheless...

We got to Tokyo and miraculously found a way out of Tokyo station, where we hailed a cab to the hotel, which the cabbie couldn't find on his own:

Sony P7

The hotel was really just the top 7 or 8 floors of the 40 story building on the left, so it was pretty small by Tokyo standards.

Went to our room, opened the window and got the reverse view:

Nikon D100, 18-35mm

Or, looking out instead of down:

Nikon D100, 18-35mm

So, that was cool.

That night, we ate at a little noodle shop up the street. No English speakers there, so we just pointed at the display items in the case and hoped for the best. Display items? In Japan, restaraunts will often have a little display case on the street with plastic replicas of the food they serve. They're often quite well-done and not as tacky as you might think. So, my wife took the watress outside and pointed at what she wanted and I pointed at the bowl in front of guy next to me, "suppu" (soup). The place soon filled up with black-suited businessmen who drank many liters of sake.

Then we found a little club up the street and hung out there, ordering drinks by randomly picking them from the all-Japanese menu. Good fun. Then we ran back to the hotel in the rain...

Nikon D100, 18-35mm

Next day, breakfast at Denny's! No, really. Denny's are everywhere in Japan, but they're not much like the ones in the States. Here's the menu:

Sony P7

You can't get salmon, or rice and miso soup, or eggs and salad, at Denny's in the US; and a side of sausage in Japan is a single sausage - though "mini hot dog" is a better description than "sausage".

Then we went to Shibuya, one of Tokyo's many shopping districts. Like Ginza, it was filled with big-name stores (a 3 story Gap) and huge malls. What we saw wasn't as high-end name-brand as Ginza, though it was still expensive ($80 for T-shirts in a little biker store that may or may not have been from the Rolling Stones' 1975 tour). We only stayed for a while, but we ate lunch at an El Toritos (right next to TGI Fridays), where we had the worst Mexican food I've ever had:

Sony P7

They were playing a Miles Davis concert from the 80's on a huge plasma TV in the corner of the resaraunt, but they were playing Mexican music on the P.A.. So, I got to watch Miles stalk around the stage in his silly 80's clothes. I just imagined he was playing La Cucarracha. Ole!

Then we left for Harajuku, a place I had previously known only from Gwen Stefani. First we went through the back-alley-esque pedestrian district, which was chock-full of girls in schoolgirl outfits, even though it was early Wednesday afternoon - don't they have school?

Sony P7

It was crazy. This section was definitely more youth-oriented than Ginza and Shibuya. T-shirt and sneaker stores (there are a lot of Chuck Taylors in Japan), alternated with old-school punk, goth, biker, surfer, skater and rock stores. All your teenage fashion fantasies can come true, in Harajuku - though the crepe vendors seemed to be doing more business than many of the stores - they smelled awesome. I bought a bunch of T-shirts. We went to a store called Snoopytown - all Peanuts stuff.

Then we went to the other section of Harajuku, which is more upscale (Louis Vutton, etc.). It was super-crowded:

Sony P7

It's a bit hard to tell, but the crowd of people on the sidewalk stretches as far as we could see - a solid mass of heads. It was like the most crowded day at the State Fair. We walked up and down the block to see what's what - but it was just more gigantic multi-story malls filled with high-end designer stores. The Japanese must spend gigantic amounts of money on clothes to keep all those shops in business.

One nice thing about those huge malls, though, is that the bottom floors are often food courts. But they aren't the McDonalds/Panda Express/Taco Bell food courts in US malls; for one thing, you almost never see seats - I guess you're supposed to buy the food and take it home; for another, the variety of foods is vast. Instead of a half-dozen fast food places all serving greasy fast food, there will be 30 different places serving everything from fresh bread to French pastries to candy to coffee to sushi to teriyaki to grilled veggies to noodles to fried everything to soups and salads. Most of it is made fresh, there. Sometimes there are multiple floors of food vendors. Ahh... delicious.

More to come...

Monday Cat Blogging

2006-04-03T22:15:00.000-04:00

Nikon D100, 18-35mm

QOTD

2006-04-03T17:11:00.000-04:00

My kinda guy.

Start Your iPods

2006-04-03T09:37:00.000-04:00

This first-monday-back-in-the-US starts with:

Sonic Youth - White Cross
Replacements - Hanging Downtown. Back when they sounded like an authentic punk band.
Nirvana - Plateau
R.E.M. - Crazy. From my favorite REM album.
Arctic Monkeys - Fake Tales of San Francisco
Elliot Smith - Good To Go
John Lennon - God
Unrest - Imperial (live)
Beat Happening - Other Side
Buena Vista Social Club - Buena Vista Social Club. From the album "Buena Vista Social Club"

If it wasn't for those meddling Arctic Monkeys, I couldda had a Solid Gold Oldies 10 ! (everything else is at least ten years old)

Hiroshima Aside

2006-04-02T17:12:00.000-04:00

After leaving the Hiroshima Peace Museum complex, it occurred to me that I had visited another great WWII memorial, many years ago. When I was ten, I took a trip with my grandparents to Hawaii, and we went to the Pearl Harbor memorial, and visited all the preserved shipwrecks, took the tours, etc.. Now, it's been 25 years, and like I said, I was ten, but I don't recall any of those memorials being dedicated to the idea of Peace. Maybe that has to do with the fact that the casualties in Pearl Harbor were mostly military, and that we weren't at war at the time.

Hiroshima

2006-04-02T08:49:00.000-04:00

We made it to Hiroshima rather easily - just two cabs and a train. We checked into our hotel, opened the window and saw...

Nikon D100, 18-35mm

City! But, Hiroshima isn't anywhere near the size of Tokyo - we were easily able to walk to all of the stuff we wanted to see. And maybe not surprisingly, it's a pretty modern city with wide streets and lots of parks. I didn't look up the population, but it feels more like a Raleigh than a NYC - smaller, less chatoic, and just a handful of really tall buildings (we were in one of them).

The hotel was the first one with in-room internet access, so I was very excited. But because 3-prong outlets are rare in Japan, I couldn't plug my laptop in anywhere. Luckily, the hotel was next to a series of gigantic multi-story malls and so I set off in search of a 3-prong adapter. 24 floors and a proportional number of escalator rides later, I found something that would work, and suddenly, we were internet-capable again. Ahh... soothe the addiction.

Our first tourist activity was an old castle. Happily, it was just a block from the hotel.

Nikon D100, 18-35mm

Like most everything else in Hiroshima, it was mostly destroyed by the Bomb, and rebuilt in the years after. Some things survived, though. There are a handful of special trees scattered around the property, each with a little sign in front of it:

Nikon D100, 18-35mm

There's also what we assumed was a shrine on the grounds of the castle:

Nikon D100, 18-35mm

Like most places, it was busy getting ready for some big festival (cherry blossom season?) - construction crews were busy doing repairs and additions. The rest of the grounds are basically a wooded park. It looks like a nice place to spend a lunch break.

And then, two blocks on the other side of our hotel...

Sony P7

The famous "A-Bomb Dome" - the only building still around that survived the bombing. It was pretty much ground zero, directly underneath the bomb, and the walls were able to stand up to the vertical pressure. Not much around it was as lucky (lucky for the building, since nobody inside survived, of course).

Here's a picture of the original building, across the river from the current one:

Nikon D100, 28-80mm

That tall building in the background is the hotel we stayed in - maybe 500m from ground zero. Humbling.

The dome is at one end of a large park. A short distance from that is the Bell of Peace:

Nikon D100, 28-80mm

Its dedication:

Nikon D100, 28-80mm

Then there's the Peace Clock:

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Its dedication:

Nikon D100, 28-80mm

This little guy was playing around the Bell of Peace:

Sony P7

A bit farther down the park, there's the children's memorial:

Nikon D100, 18-35mm

And in front of that, a few kiosks filled with tiny origami cranes, strung together to form and colorful strings and murals.

Nikon D100, 18-35mm

Then there's this structure, which holds, in the small chest in the middle, the remains of some of those killed. In the distance, you can see the dome. The children's memorial is in that line of sight, too, though it's hard to make out in this picture.

Finally, there's the Peace Memorial Museum. It goes through the history of WWII and before, including Japan's war with China and its enslavement of Korean workers (many of whom died in the blast as well). It talks about the attack on Pearl Harbor, the fight with the US in the Pacific, gets into the science and development of the bomb. It has a number of US military communications discussing target and date choice,
letters from US generals protesting the use of the bomb on civilian targets, letters from scientists (including Einstein) protesting the use of the bomb. There are large dioramas showing before and after models of the city, lots of photographs and film footage from the actual bombing, etc..

Then there's a big section devoted to the aftermath: stories of people who survived, people who survived only a short time, people who didn't come home that day, the effects of the heat and radiation on buildings and homes; there's the famous human shadow on concrete, bits of flesh that fell off of people, clothes, shoes, etc.. This section is gruesome.

Nikon D100, 18-35mm

But, the museum doesn't make Japan, the country, come off as an innocent victim. It doesn't try to say that Japan was sitting around minding its own business when the US dropped The Bomb out of the blue. Instead, the exhibits show that Japan was an active participant in the war, and not a kind one, either: the A-bomb was just an especially horrible part of an already horrible war. It does, however, make it clear that most of the people killed by the Bomb were civillians. And, because of that, the museum tries to show how horrible war is for ordinary people - especially nuclear war. It's a sobering place.

Nikon D100, 18-35mm

The bridge on the right of that picture was the official target of the Bomb. It survived the blast, and was replaced many years later.

But, the rest of the city, from what we saw, doesn't dwell on the bombing; all that is confined to the memorials. We ate lunch across the street from the museum, in a very good Italian restaraunt, and you'd never know we were a quarter mile from ground zero - no mention of the bomb, or the war. The city as a whole isn't devoted to that one event. Happily.

On a lighter note, the giant outdoor mall we visited the night before was the location of some of the best Engrish we'd come across:

Sony P7

Nikon D100

And here's a Japanese toilet:

Sony P7

Later that night, another Irish pub (they're everywhere), then a delicious Japanese single malt in the top-floor bar in our hotel (my wife had some Japanese sweet potato vodka - called "shochu" . yummy). They wanted a $10 per person charge to sit at one of the tables with a view, so we sat at the bar (for free) and looked at the expensive bottles of booze they had laid out in front of us: for example, the bottle of Hennessy in front of me cost 120,000 Yen, when we saw it at the duty-free shop in the airport; that's roughly $1,000 (you can buy it here for $1499). There was a pianist singing jazz standards - she didn't mess up the words, unlike the girl in Kyoto.

Though the A-Bomb stuff was moving/sobering/depressing/enlightening, and the bombing was obviously the reason we went (things don't get much more historic than that), what we saw of it makes me think that Hiroshima was a pretty nice place. Definitely worth the train ride.

To come: our last few days, in Tokyo.

Also, I should give credit here - many of the pictures in this series were taken by my wife. Usually I can tell (but not always) which are her's and which are mine - generally the D100 pics are mine, though we shared the P7. I think the majority are mine, because I always had one camera or the other on me. But, she took quite a lot, too. So, ya know - this wasn't all me. Plus, she did all the hotel and plane booking! Whatta gal.

Kyoto

2006-04-01T01:27:00.000-05:00

Off to Kyoto... (warning, long post ahead)

We started the day at the base of Mt Fuji, at Kawaguchiko. We had to take a bus to get to the nearest Japan Rail stop so we could take a train to Kyoto. We bought our bus tickets and waited. While I watched the luggage, Mrs. Cleek ran off to get some snacks. See if you can spot her trying to cross the street:

Sony P7

That bus turned out to be a local bus - hitting every stop it could find, for an hour - but it went through some pretty nice mountains, so that made up for it. But, then we tranferred to another local bus that spent another hour going through another string of quaint but monotonous towns - our suitcases were starting to become a real pain in the ass to drag around and we just wanted to drop them somewhere. After that bus we hopped on a train that took us to Osaka, where we had lunch:

Sony P7

Mmmm beer.

Then we got our first ride on a bullet train. Lemme tell ya: that's fun. Those trains go 120+ mph. And when you're standing on a platform waiting and one comes by, it's there and gone in mere seconds - a flash of white, a huge rushing sound and a big gust of wind, count to 5 and it's gone without a trace. And likewise, when you're on it, the scenery is a blur. Good fun. The trains have smoking cars, reserved-seat cars, first-class cars and, my favorite: silent cars. where there are no P.A. annocenments, you just check the little scrolling LED sign at the front of the car to find out what's going on.

The standard men's rooms on the trains are single urinals with a glass door. So, you stand there and people can look in and tell, by seeing your back, if it's occupied or not. Sometimes, there's the other option:

Sony P7

The scenery from Osaka to Kyoto (and from Tokyo to Osaka, it turns out) is almost a solid band of highly industrial, dense, smoggy, flat, non-stop city. It looked like nothern New Jersey (imagine the opening sequence of the Sopranos), for three hours - but with a hazy ring of steep mountains off in the distance, fencing all the sprawl onto the plain. Smokestacks everywhere, miles and miles of squat concrete buildings with occasional small rice or tea farms near concrete-walled rivers. Plus, as with everywhere, the parts of the city near the train tracks are always dismal. That was not inspiring.

Sony P7

But Kyoto.... what a fun city. Unlike Tokyo, Kyoto isn't a modern high-rise metropolis. Kyoto is older, twistier, lower to the earth and more laid-back. We stayed in another ryokan, but the view wasn't quite as nice as the last:

Nikon D100, 18-35mm

The hot tubs were too hot for either of us - I got in for mere seconds and turned bright red from the waist down. The food was the same style as the previous place - but even stranger: whole baby squid with mustard, multiple octopus variations, some strange fermented fish dumplings, etc.. We only made it through one meal there and then we cancelled the others - we couldn't eat it, and felt bad wasting their time and food. All that aside, it was in a great location for other things.

For one thing, it wsa right across the street from a huge temple/shrine/park/cemetery complex. We saw temple stuff:

Nikon D100, 18-35mm

A Japanese wedding:

Nikon D100, 28-80mm

A crane:

Nikon D100, 75-250mm

And: rickshaw drivers, an old cemetery, a collection of old expensive cars, cherry and plum trees in bloom, etc.. Very nice.

Later that night, bummed-out about our inability to handle authntic Japanese food, we went to an Irish pub. There, a Japanese girl sang passable versions of Western songs while playing piano. She did "Every Breath You Take". She got to the bridge:

Please

But, of course, when she sang that, she did what we were silently hoping she wouldn't; she sang the last word as "Prease". If you know the song, sing it to yourself with that word. OK? Now, it's not fair that we, a couple of people who speak less Japanese than a two year old Japanese child, should find it funny that a native Japanese speaker, in the course of playing and singing songs with English words, live, with her parents in the room (we think), messes up a word or two. But, she had nailed pretty much everything else; she only fudged a couple of words here and there - a typical amount for a cover act, in my experience. And she got all the L's in all the other words! So it wasn't that she couldn't do it, or that she didn't know. It's just that when she got to that one, the Big One, the Big Note, the climax of the song, she missed it, hard. She gave it that bad-Japanese accent spin. So sad. And we bit our tongues to not laugh out loud - not cruel laughter, but a happy "yeah, it's an Irish pub, but damn, we really are in Japan" laughter. On the other hand, I'm paying $5.00 each for Bass, I should be allowed to laugh at whatever I want.

Notes about drinking: wine in general is not common, even in bars. Red wine is often served cold, or with ice. Whiskey is very popular. Beer is plentiful, and you can even buy it in vending machines - and we did! often! Some vending machines sell small bottles of whiskey (not airplane bottles, bigger). A typical glass of whiskey is 1200 yen ($11). A typical beer is 500-700 yen ($4.50-6.50). It's cheaper to drink from the hotel mini-bar than it is to go to a bar, most places.

The next day in Kyoto, we went to the "Golden" temple:

Nikon D100, 28-80mm

This was a wonderful temple, covered in gold leaf, on a perfect little pond, with perfectly-sculpted trees and gardens, up on a hillside. Crowded with sightseers, though. It's a bit hard to get all peaceful and reflective when you're trying to avoid getting trampled by your fellow tourists. Still, a great place - a place where I think I could spend hours, if the crowds were smaller.

Then we went to a quiet little district, on a different hillside, full of great little shops and restaraunts - quiet twisty little streets than snake around the hills. Don't know the name, or I'd recommend it - it's near Kyoto's oldest Pagoda, if that helps. While we were there, we noticed some smoke a couple of blocks away, so we went to see what was going on. It turned out to be a Buddhist ceremony of some kind on this hilltop; monks were throwing bundles of sticks into a big fire - all the sticks had words on them. We assumed they were prayers of some kind. Some monks threw sticks, some threw water - to keep the fire smoky, I guess. Some monks banged drums, and they all chanted.

There are two flying bundles of sticks in this picture; one looks like it's attached to a wire - it's not. My wife got some video of this. Pretty wild stuff.

Nikon D100, 28-80mm

They did that for a half hour or so, then got up and marched away into the shrine. Then we walked back down to the shops were was saw these two:

Nikon D100, 28-80mm

We thought they might be real geisha, at first. But the next day we saw an ad in a paper for a service that would let you dress up as a geisha then wander around the town for an hour. That might explain why those two were taking each other's pictures while they were walking around. Oh well. Fun anyway.

Then we walked back to the hotel - but on the way, we heard music coming from a club. We walked in - no cover, since it was still mid-afternoon - and watched a couple of Japanese emo/skater bands in a dark underground club - covered with posters, graffiti and t-shirts. The bands were as good as any American college club band - the same styles, same moves, same looks - but singing in Japanese, of course. A good time. I think they were webcasting it or something. We got some audio for a couple of songs.

Sony P7

Right next door to that club was a fugu shop:

Sony P7

Poisonous blowfish anyone?

Then, later that night, we went to another Irish pub. And we heard probably the best live Irish music I've ever heard: guitar, pipes, drum. Amazingly tight. It was played by three young Japanese guys, of course:

Sony P7

And I discovered I love Jameson's 12.

One more bar. Then the walk home:

Sony P7

Because, even though we loved Kyoto, we had to get up, check out and get to Hiroshima the next day.

Day Three, Ryokan

2006-03-30T01:26:00.000-05:00

Done with Tokyo for a bit, we hopped a subway to a train to another train.

Sony P7

That took us into the Mt Fuji region. It's quite a different scene from the big-city chaos of Tokyo. The people lost that city vibe and the clothes toned down a bit. The buildings, while still small by American standards, got a little bigger, they spread out from each other and it started to look like rural anywhere - and mountains sprang up all around us - small ones, a few hundreds or maybe a couple-thousand feet for the big ones, but all with very steep sides. Rivers, rice fields and tea plantations lined the valleys. Very scenic.

Then, gradually, the sides of a gigantic mountain appeared in the haze. And then we arrived at our inn, in a tiny little resort town of Kawaguchiko, at the end of a lake, at the base of the northern side of Mt Fuji.

Nikon D100, 18-35mm

It's a little town that reminds me of Lake George, NY - there are tour boats, boat rentals, ice cream and souvenier shops, some touristy restaraunts, and nothing much else. End of March probably isn't high tourist season for that part of the country, so it was mostly empty.

Our inn was a traditional Japanese inn, called a "ryokan", with public baths, very sparse rooms, etc:

Nikon D100, 18-35mm

The housekeeping staff would come and pull out the little futon-style matresses while you were at dinner. Nobody spoke any English. Our Japanese is limited to single words and a couple of complex phrases like "thank you very much" and "beer please". It was an adventure. The hot baths were great - public nudity! Same sex, though - so it was a bit like a gym, not like a scene out of Caligula. I'm pretty sure we got all the protocol wrong. Nobody yelled at us - and we wouldn't understand them even if they did. But, imagine taking a scalding hot bath in a giant hot tub with a view of Mt Fuji... ah.

Speaking of dinner:

Sony P7

Top-left to bottom-right: hot broth; beef and veggies on a little sterno-powered skillet; raw squid and veggies to cook in the hot broth (shabu-shabu!); a plate with dried fish (?) a snail, jello on a stick, some kind of root; a bowl of sashimi (raw fish); a cube of tofu; three pickled fish; sauce; pickled veggies; peach wine.

Except for the sashimi, this was nothing like the Japanese food we'd ever had in the States. We did our best, but left a lot of it merely tasted, if at all. Then they brought out a whole fish that had been filleted, then deep fried along with the fillets, presented with the fried fish carcass making a little bowl for the fillets to sit in. Luckily it was tasty. Then some soup...

Sony P7

That's a mushroom, a dumpling of some kind, a whole baby octopus and an okra.
Whew.

The breakfast was more of the same thing.

It was still a good time. And, it was nice to see the countryside, and get a feel for what a traditional Japanese inn is like. And best of all, here's the view from our balcony:

Nikon D100, 18-35mm

And in the morning:

Nikon D100, 75-240mm

Next day: Kyoto by bus, bus and bullet train.

Onward

2006-03-29T18:19:00.000-05:00

Upon waking, we opened the curtains of our hotel window and saw...

Nikon D100, 18-35mm

Mmm... metropolicious. It's the Ginza district.

Then we went to the Fish Market! There we saw...
Dried squids!

Sony P7

Live crabs neatly packed in a cooler !

Sony P7

... and many other live, dried, chopped, ground, flaked or fried sea creatures. Very interesting... as a science project.

Someone there likes the Carolina Hurricanes... ?

Sony P7

Then we wandered around the Ginza district trying to find my wife a jacket, since I left her's in the car at the airport on the other side of the world. We went into some big department stores where we found floor after floor of expensive clothes - not just expensive by US standards, but high-end designer stuff that we couldn't afford anywhere. Apparently, the Japanese love to buy expensive clothes - and it shows; most of the people on the street are very sharply dressed, head to toe. And every mall we went to was packed full of these stores - they just can't get enough $200 blue jeans and $300 jackets.

Eventually we found an Eddie Bauer on the 6th floor of some department store / mall, where all the women's clothes were petite-sized. In fact, Eddie Bauer only sells women's petite sizes in Japan, as confirmed by the staff. That would be great news, if my wife wore petite sizes. Luckily, she found a jacket.

That problem solved, it was back to the hotel for a drink at the hotel bar before dinner. Here's the view from the top:

Sony P7

We had dinner our first two nights at the Ginza Lion - helpful staff, English menus, good food, inexpensive, with huge beers:

Sony P7

Get the bacon, spring onion and egg stir-fry !

Tomorrow, off to the countryside...

Landfall

2006-03-29T03:51:00.000-05:00

Look down there! It's land!

It's northern Honshu, Japan's big island.

Nikon D100

It's surprisingly mountainous and unpopulated.

And here we have some farm land, about 100 miles north of Tokyo.

Sony P7

And here's us. Well, sorta. we're up near the front of that plane - first class, baby. Don't fly to Tokyo any other way! It might cost you 250,000 frequent flyer miles to do it, but you'll appreciate being able to turn your seat into a bed and drink as much free booze as you want - not that you want to start a 14 hour time difference with a hangover... but it's nice to know you have the option.

Nikon D100

So, we started the day at 5:45AM EST, in Raleigh NC. There, I left my wife's jacket in the car at the airport. We flew to NYC. Then caught a flight that went north up the Hudson River (flying directly over my home town), into Canada, out over the Hudson Bay, across northern Canada, Alaska, the Bering Straight, grazing Kamchatka and finally into Tokyo, Japan - 14 hour flight. I slept a couple hours over Canada, but not much. I love flying too much - I'd rather stare out the window than sleep and miss anything.

When we got there, we found that one of our bags didn't make the flight - the one with our medicines. Yay! Then another hour train ride to Tokyo from the airport. It was 5:00PM Tokyo time, or 3:00AM EST, before we got to our hotel. Then we stayed up another 4 hours, to try to force ourselves onto Japan time. So, 25 hours of being awake. Whew. What a day.

But, in the morning (Tokyo morning), we were all rested and ready to go. Cause, hey - we were (still are, in fact) in Japan!

Bye bye, USA

2006-03-27T19:26:00.000-05:00

Here's a glacier:

Nikon D100, 75-240mm

Here's some sea ice along Alaska's western coast:

Nikon D100, 18-35mm

It goes on forever:

Nikon D100, 18-35mm

Here's some unidentified island, wrapped in ice, with a few thin clouds overhead:

Nikon D100, 18-35mm

But how do I know that's Alaska? This is how:

Nikon D100, 18-35mm

Soon, we will arrive (8 hours of flight time down, 6 to go).

What's that?

2006-03-26T19:55:00.000-05:00

Nikon D100, 18-35mm

...it's just some squiggly thing (a river ? ) ... in uninhabited central Alaska.

Nikon D100, 18-35mm

More squiggly things and a runway of some kind ... also in uninhabited central Alaska.

Say, what's the weather like outside?

Nikon D100, 18-35mm

Brrr... chilly.

Where You At?

2006-03-26T05:50:00.000-05:00

No posting for a week? Something must be going on.

Here's a hint. This is what I was looking at last Monday morning at 11:00 am:

Sony p100

Recognize that skyline? It's NYC.

Here's what I was looking at about 2 hours later.

Sony p100

Recognize that? I know, the clouds make it difficult. Here's a hint: it's named after the same guy as that big river that runs around Manhattan island...

It's the Hudson Bay, partially frozen. It's in Canada. That's the 30,000 foot view.

More to come.

Start Your iPods

2006-03-20T06:08:00.000-05:00

This week, we begin with:

Radiohead - Planet Telex
Replacements - Unsatisfied
Lilys - Generator
Replacements - Raised In The City
Dave Holland Quintet - Shifting Sands
Throwing Muses - Portia
David Bowie - Velvet Goldmine
Rolling Stones - The Spider And The Fly
Coctails - It's All Right
Horse Flies - Link Of Chain

No Robyn Hitchcock, Yo La Tengo or Cure! Something big is must be about to happen...

Monday Cat Blogging

2006-03-20T00:00:00.000-05:00

Nikon D100, 18-35mm

J&J Living The Bowel

2006-03-19T22:57:00.000-05:00

This is too fucking funny.

Man fruit braise the north almond. And don't you forget it.

Memory Lane

2006-03-18T01:46:00.001-05:00

Via that somewhat popular blogger, TBogg

Glenn Reynolds April 11, 2003

Gloat away, dickhead. Slather yourself in blood, rub ash on your face. Dance around the fire like a little warrior. You've earned it.

Happy, Pappy?

2006-03-16T14:57:00.000-05:00

Hey friend, do you want to be happy? Well, of course you do. Only poets want to be unhappy. So, let Ol' Cleek give you the five secrets to happiness:

Move down South
Go to church regularly
Join the Republican party
Get yourself a spouse
Boost your income over $100K

Follow those five steps and I'll personally guarantee you a happy life. Act now!

via Pew.

Cheat Sheet

2006-03-15T21:10:00.000-05:00

Katherine, at Obsidian Wings, writes:

handy-dandy little guide

Go read: Understanding the Bush Administration's Statements About Executive Power And Treatment of Prisoners in Nine Easy Steps.

Update: And I put together a handy on-line automated version of it, here.

Twins ?

2006-03-15T15:48:00.000-05:00

Bruce McCullough vs. James Lileks !

Chef quits 'South Park'

2006-03-13T22:23:00.000-05:00

Cites "inappropriate ridicule" of religion.

Oy.

Start Your iPods

2006-03-13T09:51:00.000-05:00

Starting this work week, with my new Shure E2c's:

Spoon - I Summon You
Beck - Side of the Road
Jimi Hendrix - Castles Made of Sand
Cowboy Junkies - Someone Out There
The Cure - A Thousand Hours
Sonic Youth - I Love Her All The Time
The Cure - The Hanging Garden
Steely Dan - Hey Nineteen
Apollo Sunshine - A Finger Pointing At The Moon
Iron And Wine - Freedom Hangs Like Heaven
(bonus - since that Apollo Sunshine song was only 30 seconds long) : Pixies - Wave Of Mutilation (UK Surf mix)

The "sound-isolating" aspect of these earphones works really well. The standard iPod earphones let a lot of sound through. But with these, I can't hear a damned thing besides the music (which really does sound excellent) and my own breathing. It's a bit like being underwater. Since I can't even hear typing, I'm making more typos. This will take some getting used to.

Monday Cat Blogging

2006-03-13T07:38:00.000-05:00

Nikon D100, 18-35mm

Look out behind you!

Bi-lateral

2006-03-12T00:46:00.000-05:00

My day job is "Senior Programmer". That means I have at least 5 years of professional programming experience (14 actually). So, bascially, I know what I'm doing when it comes to programming. Sure, the young kids are going to have a better grasp of the nuances of C# or MSIL or whatever Microsoft has decided we all need to know this month. But programming isn't really about the programming language you use; programming is really about knowing what you need to do with whatever language you have to use, in order to satisfy your customers. And after a while, you hit a point where you realize they're not really asking for anything new, they're just asking for it in different ways or with slight variations on a common theme. And there are dozens of books on this - written well before I figured it out for myself. So, at one level, my day jobs have been all pretty much the same kind of thing.

I imagine it's something like house-building: the plans say a wall goes here, and there's a window here and it might have a strange angle for a dormer or something. But people who have a lot of experience building houses know how to build the kinds of walls that go into standard 2x4 and sheet-rock houses. And if a given plan mixes walls and ceilings in new and unusual ways, it's not a huge problem - it's just a matter of working it through using techniques you know like the back of your hand. Sure. maybe some new guy will show up with a tool that can cut wood like an Exacto knife through paper - but that doesn't tell him how to build a wall, and it can't teach him. That knowledge comes from practice. In many ways, like house building, programming is a craft.

My side job is also as a programmer. But I write image processing tools - a fun little niche, in my opinion. Of course I can do all the basics: read a JPG, rotate it, resize it, filter it, put text on it, etc.. But that kind of stuff has been understood for decades. I didn't invent any of it, I just learned from looking at what other people have done. Image processing is very technical at its foundations, but there has been so much research and development done on this stuff over the years that, at this point, a lot of it is like following a cookbook: need to know how to rotate an image? there are a million places to look for good ways to do it; so pick your algorithm and type it in. The only thing left for much of it is to make your implementation as fast as you possibly can. Because besides accuracy, image processing users want their image to rotate as fast as fucking possible, and not a millisecond slower. But, it's still pretty much cookbook stuff at heart. So, at that level, it's just like my day job - the standard problems have already been solved, it's up to you to adapt the well-known solutions to the task at hand. The fun for me is in the optimization (the speed improvements - an art form of its own).

But, unlike my typical day-job stuff (ask the database for the data, put it in a list, tell the buttons what to do, etc) there's also a cutting-edge to image processing. There's a pretty substantial number of real scientists working on new things all the time. They work in things like computer vision, 3D rendering, and morphological processing (the intersection of set theory and image processing) - esoteric stuff, by most standards. The things they come up with are useful, exciting and often almost magical. But they are also so far ahead of the mainstream that the professional programmer community hasn't had time to come up with ways of implementing them - think of a set of cutting edge architects who keep inventing buildings made out of exotic materials and using techniques that the average subdivision home builder couldn't possibly use and still get that job done on schedule and budget. It's nice to look at in drawings, but how the hell can the average crew build that kind of thing?

Still, my customers will read about this stuff in a magazine and ask me if I can do it; "This is cool! I need this now!" I hate to say "No", so I always try to see what I can do. And it's always fun to be able to find new things to work on. Most of the time, I can Google around enough to find recipe I can use, and that's that. But sometimes, the thing the customer has asked about is something that is so new and esoteric that the only information I can find are technical papers, submitted to conferences or academic journals by professors and grad students who approach the problem from a mathmatical or theoretical viewpoint, written for an audience of academics, scientists, and theoreticians. There is rarely a plain-English explanation of what they're doing; there's always a bunch of long horrible equations written in terse notation where every variable has multiple super- and sub-scripts, lots of summations, glossing over details and "... this is as explained by Xhiao Lung and Frederic Grimenschtrudel in their 1986 paper, Techinques for invariant monological comprendium derivatitions and tri-quadrant bi-noodling"; and there are always graphs comparing the results of their idea to some other academics' idea - whose work I don't understand either. Once in a while I find a paper written by a student of these professors who has implemented what the professor described, but only describes a high-level sumamry of results (a picture of the finished house - never a description of how they actually built it). Tease.

So, my latest attempt is to do something called "tone mapping". It's basically an attempt to automatically adjust the brightness of an image so that previously invisible details in light and dark areas are made visible without horribly distorting the overall brightness of the image - ex. given an image of a dark room with a bright window, it would bring out details in the shadows and details in the bright areas at the same time (and in a way that looks natural) but wouldn't affect the middle tones much. Try that in Photoshop sometime, to see how difficult it is using standard tools. Well, the heart of the trick lies in knowing what constitues a "detail", and the latest techniques for this rely heavily on something called a "bilateral filter". Roughly, this is a blurring filter that can recognize abrupt changes in image intensity - and if it sees a sharp change in intensity in a group of neighboring pixels, it assumes that it's looking at a detail and tones down the blur effect in that area. Incidentally, this reminds me of how automatic focus works in cameras: they look at a small part of the image (usually the center) and adjust the focus in and out in order to find the spot that maximizes the intensity differences between pixels - higher intensity difference = higher contrast = sharper focus. Squint your eyes, contrast goes down, image gets blurry.

Now, blurring an image happens to be a cookbook technique. It's very basic; a simple blur is one of the first things a budding image programmer is likely to learn. The typical bi-lateral filter is done with a "Gaussian" filter (a well-known cookbook filter) but with a twist. And that twist is the key to the whole thing. Now, I spent a week over Christmas playing with my Gaussian filter to try to improve its performance; I certainly understand how it works in practice (it's just a simple weighted average), but I'm not sure about the mathematical theory behind it (the weightings used are what makes it a "Gaussian", and I don't know why you need those particular weights or why they do what they do). And when the academic papers talk about modifying their Gaussian filters, they're doing it from the deeper mathematical viewpoint, which I don't understand, and can't seem to make heads nor tails of. And, of course, no cookbook has caught up to what they're talking about. So I suffer through these papers, hoping one will offer me a plain-English explanation - sometimes I never find it.

It's unfortunate for me that you need a post-grad degree in mathematics to understand the state-of-the-art in computer imaging. But, that's the way it is.

Too much typing for a Saturday night.

How Much Does An Adult, Male, African Elephant Weight?

2006-03-10T17:31:00.000-05:00

defective yeti did a little research. He asked his readers: How Much Does An Adult, Male, African Elephant Weight? Then made a little graph of their guesses. So, does the average defective yeti reader know much about elephants ?

Short answer: no.

Vital Information

2006-03-10T13:36:00.000-05:00

The actress Mare Winningham is Straight.

Good to know.

One one hand...

2006-03-09T10:22:00.000-05:00

... there's the remastered version of Megadeth's "Peace Sells, But Who's Buying?" It's a classic of 80's speed metal - blazing fast, intricate, visceral, bombastic. Reportedly, Dave Mustaine, the snarling singer and leader of the band recently suffered some nerve damage in his left hand and can't play guitar anymore - so he went to work remastering all the old albums. He did a great job. The album sounds better today in iTunes format than it ever did on the cassette I wore out back in high school - brighter, sharper, heavier. And even though I'm no longer the metalhead I was 20(!?) years ago, for sheer technical brilliance, there are few better, and they really can rock when they want. So, yay for them.

On the other hand, there's the Talking Heads' double live record "The Name Of This Band Is Talking Heads", recently released for the first time on CD, and in expanded form, by Rhino. Tons of good stuff here - including the "Remain In Light" tour, which is my favorite Heads' album and one of my all-time favorites from any band. As a bonus, you get to hear Adrian Belew playing on the R.I.L. tour - elephant noises and crazy modal solos. Ahhhh. Still good after 24 years.

And on the other hand, there's The New Pornographers', "Twin Cinema". I bought this because I could no longer stand to see them mentioned everywhere while not knowing what they sound like. I looove it. They have a definite Guided By Voices vibe: poppy songs that are just rough or carefree enough in construction and execution to ensure they won't make the radio, but are nonetheless catchy and interesting. Besides the G.B.V. influence, there are bits that sound like old (really old) Pink Floyd, or Robyn Hitchcock (who also sounds like really old Pink Floyd) - ie. psyechedelic pop; bits that sound like Sufjan Stevens (quirky little orchestrated incidental things), and a couple of other things I noticed but can't remember right now. Loooove it - after two playings.

On the other hand, since it's playing on my iPod right now, the lyrics to Junior Brown's "Holding Pattern" are a masterpiece of over-the-top country-style extended metaphor and pun:

Hardly a line without a pun. Outstanding.

My cat stole the precious

2006-03-06T15:46:00.000-05:00

Amusingly, our cat is on top of the Google search for "Tricksey". She even beat those after whom she was named: the "tricksey Hobbitses" - as she should, for they are wicked and false.

Monday Cat Blogging

2006-03-06T07:37:00.000-05:00

Nikon D100, 18-35m

Start Your iPods

2006-03-06T07:34:00.000-05:00

This work week we start with:

Nirvana - Drain You
The Cure - Caterpillar
The Doors - Money (live)
Radiohead - Punchdrunk Lovesick Singalong
Blonde Redhead - Mama Cita
David Bowie - Tears
Van Halen - I'm The One
Marshall Tucker Band - A New Life
Lilys - Coby
The Sea And Cake - For Minor Sky
Neutral Milk Hotel - Where You'll Find Me Now

Hmmm... fair to middling.

Watchin the Oscars

2006-03-05T22:27:00.000-05:00

Dolly Parton - time to lay off the surgery. You're a little scary-looking.

Ha Ha Ha America

2006-03-04T18:59:00.000-05:00

Ouch

All hail the new

2006-03-01T12:34:00.000-05:00

Started a new job today. Instead of a huge four-man cubicle (each facing into a corner), I have my own office, with a door! There's a huge floor-to-ceiling window, and OK, it faces into the hallway so the view is 6 feet of blue carpet and then a wall of cubicle sides, but there's a door! Implied privacy!

I left my old job Friday, after lunch. Before lunch, I hopped on LimeWire, downloaded an MP3 of Take This Job and Shove It (yeah an unforgivable cliche, but I couldn't think of anything better), created a scheduled task to launch that MP3 at 1:30 repeating forever. Then I turned off my monitor and went to lunch, never to return. Due to their security policy, the computer would put up a password box and lock everyone out after 10 minutes of no activity, so they'd have to unplug it and take out the battery (it was a laptop) to get it to stop. What can I say... I was feeling twelve. But, I got an email from my former manager this morning; he says everyone got a good laugh out of it. So, mission accomplished.

Time to finish the Employee Workplace Harrasment Training Course!

Grass Seed

2006-02-28T11:09:00.000-05:00

Nikon D100, 105mm with reversed 50mm, flash

That's a little seed growing on this ornamental grass plant in our dining room.

Here's how big it is, compared to my index finger.

Nikon D100, 105mm

8th Grade Math

2006-02-27T12:29:00.000-05:00

I Passed 8th Grade Math

I got 10/10

Could You Pass 8th Grade Math?

Monday Cat Blogging

2006-02-27T09:58:00.000-05:00

Nikon D100, Lensbaby

Start Your iPods

2006-02-27T09:10:00.000-05:00

This wonderful work-free Monday starts with:

Rolling Stones - Brown Sugar (live)
Smashing Pumpkins - Geek USA
Robbie Fulks - You Break It You Pay
Stereolab - Nomus Et Phusis
Spoon - Advance Cassette
Figure Eight - Multiplication Rock
The Vaselines - Dying For It
Artie Shaw & His Orchestra - Temptation
Wilco - Blank
Rolling Stones - What a Shame

Guess this means I hope I'll like my new job!

Shine on, crazy Albert

2006-02-24T09:53:00.000-05:00

From the Dynamic Einstein.

Marriage Contract

2006-02-21T14:51:00.000-05:00

The Smoking Gun brings us a Sicko Marriage Contract. No foolin, this guy is fucked-up.

Start Your iPods

2006-02-20T10:11:00.000-05:00

This wonderful work week starts with:

Van Halen - Push Come To Shove
Rolling Stones - Little Red Rooster
Belly - Untitled and Unsung
Beastie Boys (with Q-Tip) - Get It Together
Television - Guiding Light
Kinks - Johnny Thunder
Rolling Stones - Casino Boogie
Sonic Youth - Silver Rocket
Yo La Tengo - Fog Over Frisco
Radiohead - 2+2=5

Woo hoo!

Monday Cat Blogging

2006-02-20T01:04:00.000-05:00

Nikon D100, 18-35mm

Henry

2006-02-19T12:22:00.000-05:00

Henry Rollins Threat to Australian Security.

Your lips move but I can't hear what you're saying

2006-02-17T15:43:00.000-05:00

I have literally nothing to do at work. I turned in my two week notice this past Monday, as my iPod random ten predicted. And now I'm just sitting here, utterly bored. No new work coming my way, all my existing work done. They should just let me go today.

I'm snooping around Pitchfork Media, feeling like a loser (cause, really, that site is pathetically pretentious and who the fuck would want to be there if there was anything else to do?) when I spot a headline about Q-Tip, one of guys from A Tribe Called Quest. I know next to nothing about hip-hop; I only know that I liked the Beastie Boys and A.T.C.Q back in 93, and haven't found anything else since that doesn't make me sad for the state of mankind. But I went ahead and clicked over to this little blurb, in case it said something like "Q-Tip does a new record that sounds exactly like ATCQ in '93! All you lamers who are stuck in the last millennium rejoice! Whatwhat?!"

It was worse than that:

Kanye once said Dilla's drums "can't ever be topped." There's nothing like tragedy when it comes to legitimizing hyperbole, huh? These kick drums sound like John Goodman farting on the Challenger while it blows up. The heartbeat of Q-Tip's floptastic solo jernt, which was produced almost entirely by the man in question, has got three different samples looped up, weaving and sneezing on each other. Each one-- the frisky guitar, the Vibrettes drums, and ESG's "UFO" skylight swerve-- has an identity of its own, but is also syncopated deep into the track. The multiple samples are appropriate, considering the jam is about riding around in your whip knocking your favorite music out the woofers. I guess the Abstract's lothario shtick ain't so bad in retrospect, but really, no one's listening for that racket. It works because it's complicated and sloppy. Nobody knows how to intentionally fuck up a track anymore.

Hmmm... I got nothing better to do, so I'm going to go through this fucker one line at a time.

Kanye once said Dilla's drums "can't ever be topped."
I recognize the name "Kanye"; no idea who "Dilla" is, or what he has to do with this Q-Tip song. If there is a relation, a review would be a good place to put it, no ?

There's nothing like tragedy when it comes to legitimizing hyperbole, huh?
Perhaps. What?

These kick drums sound like John Goodman farting on the Challenger while it blows up.
I guess that's the tragedy and the hyperbole thing. But I don't know what on earth, or in space, that would sound like. I can appreciate the sound of fart, and I can imagine the sound of a Space Shuttle exploding .. but the two together? The engineer in me says: Given the size of a shuttle, you'd only hear the explosion, no matter how big the ass. But this guy hears the combination...

The heartbeat of Q-Tip's floptastic solo jernt, which was produced almost entirely by the man in question, has got three different samples looped up, weaving and sneezing on each other.
Jernt? Which man? What's the question?

Each one-- the frisky guitar, the Vibrettes drums, and ESG's "UFO" skylight swerve-- has an identity of its own, but is also syncopated deep into the track.
I think I know what he's trying to say with "syncopated deep into the track", but that seems like a lousy way to say it.

The multiple samples are appropriate, considering the jam is about riding around in your whip knocking your favorite music out the woofers.
I think there's a bit of logic missing from that. How does the number of samples make anything more or less appropriate for driving around ? Is a song without samples inappropriate?

I guess the Abstract's lothario shtick ain't so bad in retrospect, but really, no one's listening for that racket.
I think I understand this one: "Abstract" is Q-Tip's pseudonym name - right, a guy named "Q-Tip" has a nickname. And I guess he's doing "shtick" these days. I'll give a half letter grade bonus for "lothario", though.

It works because it's complicated and sloppy. Nobody knows how to intentionally fuck up a track anymore.
Those two sentences are fighting each other: The first thumbs its nose at the second; the second one questions the validity of the first.

Overall, the review doesn't work - because it's complicated and sloppy. C-.

Onward Macho Killers

2006-02-15T11:44:00.000-05:00

James Wolcott said:

I saw a creature die in earnest earlier this afternoon on CNN. Rick Sanchez was filing a report on hunting protocol and safety, tramping through the woods with a pair of experienced hunters. At the end of the segment one of the hunters shot a quail, which fell from the air and landed in the grass, its wings thrashing. An animal died so that the segment could make its point. And it made me realize or re-realize that I don't have any respect even for 'responsible' hunting, because the deaths it causes are still wanton and unnecessary, even if the carnage is less promiscuous than that of the canned hunts favored by Cheney, Scalia, and similar Davy Crocketts on male-bonding expeditions.

... and it got me thinking...

When I was in high school, my friends and I did a lot of hunting. Once or twice a month, we'd grab our .22s and go marching into the woods around our little town. We shot mostly squirrels, which my friends, two brothers, would take home and eat. Since their stepmother fried the little things in lard, and I couldn't (still can't) stand the smell of anything frying in lard, I never ate any of it.

Back then I didn't think of the squirrels as creatures with any kind of intelligence, except whatever was required to run away when we approached them - and even an insect has that much. They were mostly quick-moving gray targets. I don't know how many I killed over the years. Dozens, at least.

When I graduated high school, I put my guns in storage and went off to college, never to go hunting again. I didn't even think of my guns until sometime during my 4th year of college, when I needed some cash - probably to buy guitar strings or Ramen. So, I found them, wrapped in plastic bags, sitting in a corner in my step-grandmother's basement. I brought them to a local gun shop and sold them. That was probably fifteen years ago.

Since then, I've turned against hunting, personally - if other people want to do it, that's their choice. While I think I'd still enjoy shooting at targets, I know I'd take no joy in killing a squirrel or a deer or quail, or anything, really - I'm even basically opposed to killing fish for sport. I was quite the fishing enthusiast back in my school days, too ('fishing' was one of my listed under in my senior yearbook photo). But I never kept anything I caught, partly because most of what I caught came from the Hudson River, literally right next to the GE plants responsible for making the Hudson the "the most PCB-tainted water body on the planet". The fish, mostly rock bass, perch and various sunfish varieties, were often covered with sores and tumors - yum. There were places I could go to catch fish that were edible, but I could walk to the river from my house in just a couple of minutes. And even when I did catch edible fish I never kept them; I had no need to. I didn't need them for food, didn't want to put them on my wall, etc.. I've been fishing since then, but I still throw it all back.

Anyway... I recently got into a little discussion about hunting, on a wingnut blog post about Cheney's hunting accident. Since I'm not a Cheney sycophant, the other posters immediately assumed I'd never fired a gun, owned one, taken a shooting course, had a hunting license, or been hunting - just another sissy city-boy liberal, I guess is the assumption - and therefore, I had no right talking about the Cheney incident because I was out of my element. Well, it was fun to correct them and say that yes, in fact, I have done all that, and some of my relatives still do; hunting is not yet a GOP-only activity. The goal posts immediately moved somewhere else, of course.

What got me thinking, though, was this: yes, I've done all that; I know all about guns and gun safety, hunting and being a big macho slayer of smaller animals. But these days I have zero interest in doing it again. I no longer think of the animals that I used to shoot as little animated targets; I realize that they have their lives to live, just as I have mine. That they don't know how to speak or type an email doesn't give me the moral authority to kill them as a way to boost and soothe my own ego (a.k.a. "for sport"). I'd rather feed squirrels and birds then kill them. I have absolutely no interest in killing a deer or a bear. And if ever offered, I'll politely decline the chance to shoot farm-raised birds. Yes, I'm sure it's a great challenge to hit a fast-moving bird from 100 feet, and I'm sure the VP takes great pride in the accomplishment; but beyond a test of hand-eye coordination that I can duplicate with a copy of Half Life 2, the point of killing birds eludes me. I don't need to stand on a pile of little corpses to feel like a man.

Hold the ice

2006-02-14T10:37:00.000-05:00

12 year old budding scientist, Jasmine Roberts reports:

'I found that 70-percent of the time, the ice from the fast food restaurant's contain more bacteria than the fast food restaurant's toilet water.'

Start em Up

2006-02-13T09:58:00.000-05:00

This work week, the iPod starts off with:

Miles Davis - Four
Adrian Belew - Old Fat Cadillac
Robyn Hitchcock - Uncorrected Personality Traits (live)
Beck - It's All In Your Mind
Radiohead - No Surprises
King Crimson - Sleepless
The Cure - Throw Your Foot Away
Moby Grape - 8:05
The Sea And Cake - Sending
The Cars - The Little Black Egg

Interesting. Guess I'll be quitting my job this week.

Monday Cat Blogging

2006-02-13T08:20:00.000-05:00

Nikon D100, 18-35mm

Investing

2006-02-10T12:12:00.000-05:00

Money mag lists five stocks they "love". Leading the list is Apple.

Now, I don't know when that article was written. But, if it was written any time in the last month, the author[s] should've been taken out behind the woodshed. Why?

APPL:

That's why.

See that peak? That's Jan 11^th. And see that little nipple at the top of that peak? That's me, buying in. I am not a good investor. But now I at least know to ignore what Money magazine recommends.

Oi

2006-02-07T08:09:00.000-05:00

Photoshop, baby!

The good old days

2006-02-06T10:19:00.000-05:00

Glenn Greenwald, Live blogging the NSA hearings:

We used to quote Madison, Jefferson and Lincoln to decide what the principles of our Government are going to be. Now we quote Al Qaeda. The Administration wants Al Qaeda and its speeches to dictate the type of Government we have. It is the centerpiece of everything they do and say.

Start your iPods

2006-02-06T09:21:00.000-05:00

... and this week we start with...

Interpol - Leif Erikson
Cowboy Junkies - Floorboard Blues
Cowboy Junkies - First Recollection
Polvo - Well Is Deep
Pavement - Billie
Cowboy Junkies - To Lay Me Down
Beck - Sing It Again
Big Star - Thank you Friends
Buena Vista Social Club - Murmullo
John Lennon - Beautiful Boy

Three Cowboy Junkies' songs in my random ten? Hmm...

Mysterious sudden meeting with my manager announced... wonder what that means?

... heh. it means we've been bought. Current word is they're keeping all products and employees... but you know how that stuff goes.

Monday Cat Blogging

2006-02-06T07:18:00.000-05:00

Nikon D100, 50mm

Ampulex

2006-02-02T15:59:00.000-05:00

Carl at The Loom writes about The Wisdom of Parasites:

Read the whole thing!

Ho. Lee. Fuck. Ing. Squick.

Look out! Trigens!

2006-02-01T12:07:00.000-05:00

W sayeth:

creating human-animal hybrids

Errr... what?

Has W been staying up late playing Far Cry ? And has the lack of sleep made it impossible for him to keep the two worlds separate in his mind ?

Look out, Condi! That one's got a rocket-launcher on his arm!

Start Your iPods

2006-01-30T09:58:00.001-05:00

This work week, we start with:

Adrian Belew - The Ideal Woman
Robyn Hitchcock - Beautiful Queen
The Replacements - Gary's Got a Boner
The Cars - Let's Go
Jimi Hendrix - Wind Cries Mary
Tortoise - Spiderwebbed
Cassandra Wilson - Tea For Two
Pavement - Two States (live)
Colorblind James Experience - She Took The Ring Off The Dead Man's Finger
Pavement - Perfume-V (live)
Bonus : Steven Jesse Bernstein - This Clouded Heart

Just a note... that Tortoise song, like many Tortoise songs, runs into the song the follows it: there's no discrete end. But, in an MP3, there has to be a discrete end; and in this case, it's abrupt and ugly - not even a fade-out, just a CHOP.

So, what I'd like to see is an "alpha channel" for sound. What's an alpha channel, Precious ? Well, a 24-bit image is made of 3 channels (Red, Blue and Green) with 8 bits of color information per channel. A 32-bit image has Red, Blue, Green and Alpha channels, where the Alpha channel controls the transparency for that pixel. So, using the alpha channel, you can blend or mask one image onto another smoothly, without sharp edges. An alpha channel in an MP3 could be used to control how the sound blends with other sounds; for example, you could have the end of a song gradually become 'transparent'. This would need one other little addition: the ability to put a marker in an MP3 that tells the player when to start the next song (even if that's before the current song has ended). The player would see that marker, start the next song, and then blend the two songs together using the alpha values of the ending song.

I know some players can do something like this automatically, for every song; but it'd be nice if the song itself could control it; that way, songs that were intended to run together on the original record (like that Tortoise song) could run together in MP3 form, too.

Monday Cat Blogging

2006-01-30T08:23:00.000-05:00

Nikon D100, 50mm

Minor - Major

2006-01-27T16:48:00.000-05:00

Like many bloggers, TBogg does a weekly random Top 10. A lot of people (regulars, mostly) post their own random ten in response. We all get to feel good about ourselves, because everybody else has lousy taste in music - or something.

Anyway, it looks like the majority of people who post their random 10 list them in "Song - Artist" order, instead of "Artist - Song" order. This annoys me (no big deal, I'm easily annoyed).

It simply feels wrong to put the more-specific (and presumably less well-known) part of the song information before the less-specific (and presumably more well-known). You can assume everyone has heard of The Beatles. And you can assume not everyone has heard of their song "Long Long Long".

Why does it matter? Well, for one thing, when I see a list of songs, I skim, looking for bands I like, dislike or merely recognize. If it's a band I dislike, I won't bother looking at the song title. Putting the band (the part of the info that people have a better chance of recognizing) first means people can evaluate the list, at least at one level, faster.

Secondly, in all the programming languages I can think of, when you're looking at an object, or a structure, or any heirarchical data, you start with the most-general part, then work down to specifics, in a left to right order: MyObject.SomethingInsideMyObject.SomethingInsideThatThing.TheGoodies. Or, even more familiar, filenames:

C:\temp\pictures\booty.jpg.
You'd never write:

booty.jpg/pictures/temp/C:
Even if the syntax of that form was better, the idea of working from the inside out feels counter-intuitive.

And putting the song first feels counter-intuitive, too.

Yeah, this is stupid. I'm waiting for 5:00.

Current Events

2006-01-27T12:49:00.000-05:00

If "democracy" is President Bush's answer to terrorism, doesn't the advent of democratically-elected terrorists suggest that answer isn't good enough ?

Tift and Son

2006-01-26T10:11:00.000-05:00

Sony P7

Mrs. Cleek and I went to see Son Volt and Tift Merritt last night, at The Disco Rodeo.

Here's Tift:

Sony P7

She was good, if a bit hoarse. My wife likes her better on record, than live. I like her better live.

Here's Jay Farrar from Son Volt, playing harmonica:

Sony P7

It's a good thing Farrar has interesting lyrics and can write such rocking songs, because the combination of his near monotone delivery and minimal stage presence would sink anyone else - I think I saw him break his blank expression with a smile once the whole night. Nonetheless, I do love me some Son Volt. They have a few songs that rank among my all-time favorites (including their cover of Ron Wood's Mystifies Me).

Interestingly, the lead guitar player, Brad Rice, played for both Tift and Son Volt last night. He played on the latest Son Volt album, and he was playing for Tift when we saw her on Austin City Limits last Saturday night. Busy guy.

Adept at Ignoring Facts

2006-01-25T10:20:00.000-05:00

A study finds that Democrats and Republicans are both adept at Ignoring Facts. Not only that, they get a mental rush while they do it.

Heh.

via /.

That fits nicely with a study (pdf), linked-to by a Slashdot poster, which notes:

Your brain uncritically accepts the first information it gets in any new
subject area as correct, whether it is or not.
Subsequent information that is in keeping with the information already
present in your brain is uncritically accepted as correct, whether it is or
not.
A new item that is contradictory to the information present in your brain is
automatically rejected as incorrect, whether it is or not.
Your brain considers every item that is compatible with the majority of its
information in a given subject area to be correct and every item that is
contradictory to its information to be incorrect. As a result, the brain has no
internal way to know which items of its information are correct
representations of the real world and which are not.
Your brain has no way to know whether or not it has all the information
required to respond appropriately to a given stimulus.
Unless your brain has additional information to the contrary, it interprets
similar items as being identical.
Your brain cannot measure anything directly. All measurements must be
made by comparison against an appropriate standard, which is often done
incorrectly.
Your brain continues to interpret the external world as it was when the last
sensory signal about a given subject area was received. As a result, the
brain is not aware that some of its formerly correct information is now
incorrect.

Stupid brains.

Without comment

2006-01-24T21:58:00.000-05:00

Nikon D100, 28-80mm

My name is Anxiety

2006-01-24T08:29:00.000-05:00

Nikon D100, 50mm

The benefits of careful reading

2006-01-23T19:54:00.001-05:00

So, I'm trying to install some new forum software to handle user questions for my software company (my fun job, not the one I hate), because the one I am currently using is giving me some problems.

The new stuff installs OK, and then I try to import the old forum posts into the new forum setup. There's a utility that comes with the new stuff that's supposed to handle this, and it does, mostly. All the posts and all the users and accounts and everything gets imported nicely, with not too much hassle. I'm impressed. But, all the dates on all the posts show up as Jan 1, 1970. Now, all you programmers will recognize that date as a timestamp of 0 - the beginning of time for Unix systems (and all that copied the Unix time system), so I sadly realized that the forum importer was just failing to get a valid time, and as default, was setting all timestamps to zero. Oh well.

I thought I'd re-import the old posts, with some different settings, to try to fix this date issue. But, I couldn't find a way in the new system, to erase all the stuff I had just imported first. So, I went for a re-install. I started the installer, and it said "Hey, you already did this. Do you want to write over the existing stuff (possible problems ahead!) or do you want to delete the old stuff and create from scratch (warning! you'll lose all your old stuff!) ?" Well, of course I went with the "from scratch" option - I wanted to lose the old stuff, it was wrong.

But, if I had read a little more carefully, I would've seen that the warning about the "from scratch" option was warning me that it wasn't going to just delete the database tables associated with the forum software... No, it was going to delete all the tables in the database. What? You mean even tables that the forum software shouldn't even be looking at? Yup.

So, kaboom. And it's gone. Goodbye database! Goodbye new forum. Goodbye existing forum. Goodbye website back-end. Goodbye customer registration data. Goodbye ability to add new customers. Hello tech ISP support - got any recent backups? Yeah, we have one from 4 days ago. That'll be $75, please.

Again, if I had read carefully, this wouldn't have happened. But then again, software really shouldn't do things that are both unexpected and calamitous.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Not what I wanted to do tonight.

--

Update:
After twelve hours of panic (and even a few scary dreams about data-eating viruses destroying my home PC), it's all back to normal. They restored my db file, with only 3 days of data missing; and I can fix that by hand. Now I'll run a full backup of my own, create a new db for the new forum to live in and try it all again.

Monday Cat Blogging

2006-01-23T19:33:00.000-05:00

Nikon D100, 50mm

The Wienerwhistle has four holes

2006-01-23T16:56:00.000-05:00

So, grab your Wienerwhistle™ and learn the toot!

Start Your iPods

2006-01-23T09:50:00.000-05:00

This week we start with:

Throwing Muses - Fall Down
White Stripes - Passive Manipulation
Beatles - Everybody's Got Something To Hide Except Me And My Monkey
Replacements - We're Coming Out
Robyn Hitchcock - I Have Seen The Sleeping Nights of Jesus
Led Zeppelin - Over The Hills and Far Away
Pavement - Motion Suggests
Breeders - Invisible Man
John Lennon - Mind Games
My Bloody Valentine - Emptiness Inside

Keepin it old school - I guess.

34 Q For You

2006-01-20T12:06:00.000-05:00

Take the MENSA Intelligence Test! It's fun.

I got a 27. Would've been 28 if I thought to make the J's plural on #6.

The Jingo

2006-01-20T09:36:00.000-05:00

Via The Poor Man Institute.

The blob

2006-01-20T08:15:00.000-05:00

Nikon D100, 105mm macro, 5T close-up

I did some drywall patching this past weekend. One morning, I found this little guy was stuck to the wall.

Francophobia

2006-01-18T13:13:00.000-05:00

I'm not sure why, but this picture scares me a little.

Boat?

2006-01-17T13:27:00.000-05:00

"Behold, good Cabinet Maker, the ancient and mysterious forest! I command you, turn this into a fine dining room set! Upholster the chairs in red leather, and I'd like real leaded glass panes in the curio cabinet."

"Ummm..."

"Here, take this screwdriver and paint brush. You'll need these to screw the boards together and of course to spread the polyurethane after you sand and stain everything. No too much, though. Matte finish, please. I will leave you to your work." He leans over and pushes me out of the truck, closes the door tips his hat, then drives away with a truck full of tools and Joe, the lumberjack, who's dozing in the back seat.

"Ummm... Really? OK. What?"

I stare at the wall of trees and vines for a week. Eventually, the barest outlines of plan start to form: I must find dry wood on the ground to build a fire, find rocks, iron ore, smelt it, fashion a saw of sorts, maybe a dozen different saws, etc.. The more I think about it, the more confused I become; I am astounded at the scope. I'll need to find and cut down hardwoods, saw them into boards. Build a lathe, a chemistry bench, formulate a stain, re-invent polymers, produce polyurethane in quantity. Make nails, screws, glue, glass, sandpaper. I sigh. I try a few times to throw the screwdriver just right so it sticks in the ground.

This project will take many years. I have a month. I call my boss to ask for assistance. "Do you really want abalone shell inlay? Where do I get that?"

"From the ocean."

"Is there an ocean nearby?"

"Of course there's a ocean nearby. It's on the other side of the forest. Once you've cleared a road through the trees, paved it, and installed street lights, you'll be able to tow your boat out to the lake."

"Boat?"

"Yes, a small one should do. I figure you'll have enough lumber leftover - look how many trees there are! Oh, GPS might be useful too. Your choice, though. Whatever you think is best. Anyway, you need to cross the lake, sail north 60 miles then through the channel with the whirlpool. Or is it south? Whichever, just look for the volcano. Once you get past the whirlpool, you'll see a fishing village. Win the trust of the tribal chief, marry his daughter. When your first child is born, offer it to the god of the volcano. At sunrise the next day, the sun will appear atop a distant mountain peak. The ocean is just beyond a desert on the other side of that mountain."

"Ummm..."

"Just holler if you need some help. I'll be on the beach with Joe."

The Unintended Consequences of Religious Fervor

2006-01-16T16:35:00.000-05:00

An interesting read, if you're an atheist. I imagine it would be quite infuriating if you're not.

Etymology Lesson

2006-01-16T14:27:00.000-05:00

The name Iran means "Land of Aryans":

Iran

[ir(ayr) + an]

arya/ayria

Gilan, Isfahan, Tehran, Ardakan, Khorasan, Azarbaijan, Gorgan

That is all.

Start Your iPods

2006-01-16T10:01:00.000-05:00

This horrid work week starts with:

Liz Phair - Divorce Song
Fiona Apple - Tymps
Robyn Hitchcock - You and Oblivion
Miles Davis - All of You
Elliot Smith - Pitseleh
Unrest - I Do Believe You Are Blushing
Polvo - Tragic Carpet Ride
Belly - Every Word
Chris Hillman & Steve Earle - High Fashion Queen . From the fantastic Gram Parson's tribute album.
The Beatles - Polythene Pam

Wow. Great set.
Hate hate hate my job.

Trivia about Cleek

2006-01-16T08:29:00.001-05:00

The Mechanical Contrivium Has this to say about Cleek:

Ten Top Trivia Tips about Cleek!

A bride should wear something old, something new, something borrowed, and cleek!
Long ago, the people of Nicaragua believed that if they threw cleek into a volcano it would stop erupting!
The Eskimos have over fifty words for cleek.
Europe is the only continent that lacks cleek.
Cleek is the world's smallest mammal!
The water in oceans is four times less salty than the water in cleek.
Two grams of cleek provide enough energy to power a television for over twenty-three hours.
Native Americans never actually ate cleek; killing such a timid prey was thought to indicate laziness.
Cleek is the only king without a moustache on the standard pack of cards.
Louisa May Alcott, author of 'Little Cleek', hated cleek and only wrote the book at her publisher's request.

Monday Cat Blogging

2006-01-16T07:40:00.000-05:00

Nikon D100, 50mm, Hi-2 speed

The Song of the Idiot

2006-01-13T07:51:00.000-05:00

Once you have this:

...and this:

It must be very strange to be President Bush. A man of extraordinary vision and brilliance approaching to genius, he can't get anyone to notice. He is like a great painter or musician who is ahead of his time, and who unveils one masterpiece after another to a reception that, when not bored, is hostile.

How long till we get this?

MP3s: Nixon, Carter, Kennedy