1. 24 June 2007

    String

    439 days ago

    P1030202.

  2. 02 June 2007

    The Mezzanine

    Nicholson Baker

    461 days ago

    A day in the life of a young man working in a nameless corporate office, full of wonderful minutiae and digression. Not even a day actually, more like a lunch hour.

  3. 23 March 2007

    You get what you wish for

    532 days ago

    So my favorite mysterious phenomenon is when just as you begin to wonder about when something will happen, it happens. Someone has wandered off into another room, and just as you wonder where they’re at, poof, they walk back to wherever you were wondering about them. This has happened like 5 times tonight. It’s great fun, and it just culminated my night (it having now become the next day) with me finishing a paragraph of my reading and thinking something along the lines of: is it seven o’clock? no, couldn’t be 7. man, it must be almost seven…. The next thing to happen was delightful in the most, because I have my powerbook set to speak the time at every hour, and just as my mind settled down and turned to look at the clock, my computer spoke (System voice: Vicki): It’s 7 o’clock.

    A few general observations:

    • This cannot be willingly put to use. With even the slightest thought of trying to force something to happen by emulating the above series of events, you’ve already fucked it up and you’re only deluding yourself now.
    • Often the effects don’t come around until the thing to take place is mentioned aloud. As soon as it’s asked when/whether someone was indeed coming over, they appear in the doorway. You can wonder to yourself however often you want with no result, but once expressed aloud between concerned parties: poof.
    • At soccer practice, running sprints, I have an uncanny anticipation of when the hand will drop to give the start. I can get a pretty good jump on everyone else, so much so that they think I’m cheating (I may be a bit, but my jumps are never flagrantly early: I don’t get much more than a step on the rest, but I do consistently get a good step). It seems to be a related sense, just in clearing my mind and not thinking about anything all the sudden I know just before it happens that the signal is about to be given.
    • This is all very likely just a case of positive reinforcement. Ie: I make stupid predictions like this all the time, but the failed predictions are utterly forgettable, while the uncannily accurate ones give me a warm fuzzy feeling and stick around in my mind. But still, you can’t diss the warm fuzzies. Then again for all I know, I’m a psychic.

    Addendum, 5 days later: Playing pool today one of my balls was sitting right on the edge of the corner pocket waiting to get knocked in. Before the other guy hit his shot I told the ball that it wasn’t going in. It didn’t. I was up next, and only needed to knock in one ball to win. I told the ball in question that it was done for, out loud, in exactly the spirit of this post, without thinking about it or anything. I hit, knocked the blue ball but missed. Both the cue ball and I think it was the 4 bounced off the walls for a while (I always hit way too hard). I’ll try to describe this well: blue was coming back towards the original pocket, but you could tell it was an inch or two off. Happily, white was coming back on a different trajectory, and the two hit maybe 5 inches and 45º out from the pocket, sending blue one on it’s way.

  4. 14 January 2007

    The Big U

    Neal Stephenson

    600 days ago

    Reading this book makes me want to learn both to play the organ and write machine code (As far as Stephenson is concerned, I remember somewhere in the beginning of Cryptonomicon a discussion of how the two are, in fact, identical). As good as I’d expect a Stephenson novel to be.

  5. 06 October 2006

    Moonlight ride

    700 days ago

    So tonight wasn’t just a beautiful, 65º night and a full moon. It was also a harvest moon, and probably the last big moon before things start getting to be freezing around here. Cool I thought, I bet that I could get a good bike ride in.

    I wasn’t sure whether there would be enough light, but there was plenty. I went around the pomme de terre loop, which I think comes in at about 7 miles, and was probably out for an hour.

    Best thing I’ve done in a while. I don’t know if it was the novelty of biking through the country in the dark or the perfect weather or the absolute silence (but for my bike, which just purrs, and the wind) or what, but I got that sense of euphoria that rises through your whole torso and into your throat, where you just can’t keep from smiling.

    At one point I came around a bend and startled a pair of deer in a field off to my right, they took off along the path (which was following a road) and I got to chase them for a few hundred yards.

    I took a few photos, and might just have to head back out tomorrow.

  6. 14 September 2006

    722 days ago

    Wii

    Holy shit I want one of these. The controller looks amazing. I’ve never had a console, played PC games a bit, but the furthest I’ve ever gotten with a handheld controller is the one on my C64, with one stick and one button. Beyond that I just can’t do it, and don’t enjoy button mashing. I’m really tempted to blow all my money on this and a tv screen to play it on. (Here’s a good summary of new Wii info)

    via Kjell Olsen722 days ago

  7. 02 December 2005

    1008 days ago

    Never Underestimate the Power of Fun

    This is exactly what gets me about college. Play is extracted from work, and play inevitably becomes getting drunk and killing someone tearing down a goal post while celebrating a football victory (yes, thats my school).

    ...play=learning, play=practice, and learning/practice=survival. Play – and laughter – sends a signal to the brain that “this is good, and it matters”, which is why we’re often more likely to remember especially funny things than neutral or annoying things.

    I can’t understand how college makes work and play so irreconcilable. I’m all too close to dropping out, college just doesn’t any sense to me.

    via Kjell Olsen1008 days ago

  8. 21 July 2005

    Dry Ice Fun

    1142 days ago

    Dry ice is fun stuff to play with, but be careful. Wear gloves, and don’t be a dumbass, because there is the potential for substantial injury. You’ve been warned, now there are some real cool things you can do too. I probably don’t know the half of it.

  9. 17 July 2005

    Back from Camp

    1146 days ago

    I was at camp all last week, and I didn’t touch the computer once. The camp is called Danebod, and I posted on it exactly a year ago, in the same situation – having returned midday saturday and slept on and off until sunday morning.

  10. 22 May 2005

    1202 days ago

    Creative summer & side jobs | Ask MetaFilter

    I really need to get a summer job, and outside of the guy at the hardware store saying he would call me back last week to give me a job (which he didn’t), I really got nothing. C’mon metafilter, lets do this together.

    via Kjell Olsen1202 days ago

  11. 19 May 2005

    1205 days ago

    May is National Bike Month!

    I’ve been biking 10-30 miles on nice days the last few months, how about you? Biking is so much more gratifying then driving.

    via Kjell Olsen1205 days ago

  12. 06 March 2005

    1279 days ago

    MilesTag - DIY Laser Tag System

    Here’s a heck of a priject: diy, open source laser tag sets!

    Kjell Olsen1279 days ago

  13. 18 January 2005

    1326 days ago

    The New York Times > National > Skiers Risk Answering the Call of Their Wild Side

    Harrowing account of how dangerous it really is to ski the back-country adjunct to ski resorts. I’ve always wanted too, but I’m not stupid and yes – don’t know the fuck I would be doing!

    “If you’re an adult and you want to go and risk your life, it’s your business,” he said. “We just have to clean up the mess.”

    via Kjell Olsen1326 days ago

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