_
respond?
(1)
09:23:55 PM,
Monday 19 September 2005
-
_
respond?
09:23:28 PM,
Monday 19 September 2005
-
_
respond?
09:22:55 PM,
Monday 19 September 2005
-
_
respond?
09:22:40 PM,
Monday 19 September 2005
-
Ever since we moved to Providence, my monitor has been damaged. 3 years and one move later, I was still using it. There was a crack in the case, and occasionally the color would go wonky or the screen would tire of representational work and turn abstract. To begin with, pressing gently near the crack in the case would fix this. this later turned to whacking, thumping, and finally all out assault. For the past few months, the color has been refusing to stay normal; either everything goes salmon, or blue goes sparkly. At any rate, today I lost half the screen permenently, and then managed to crack the screen before it started to behave, so now I have a lovely new 17 inch monitor. The liquid crystal cracking was fascinating: When I pressed on the screen, black cracks would spread across, and grow crystalline offshoots, that would then melt into blobs.
I'm going to have to unlearn regularly hitting my monitor.
_
respond?
(2)
01:54:08 PM,
Sunday 18 September 2005
-
The Pratchett talk/book signing made feel uncomfortably at home. Being surrounded by book geeks again was peculiar. Everyone looked familiar. There was even a smaller version of Bearded Moss. I felt that I fit in, and wasn't sure I liked it. The crowd was a bit to fannish, a bit too... sci-fi convention. I don't care whether Carrot and Angua are going to have puppies or the rest of the soap opera/fanfic sorts of issues. I would have thought a world as shallow and daft as discworld would have been safe from this. I don't care what it was like to work with Neil Gaiman. Neil Gaiman effects me about the same way John Barth does. I certainly don't care about the merchendising plans. Don't get me wrong, it was fun. He was amusing enough. I want to have St. Johns discussions about the books, I suppose. I didn't get to ask my Tiffany Aching question. Sticking around for the signing didn't appeal. I'll have to put it in an email.
_
respond?
(1)
06:02:10 PM,
Saturday 17 September 2005
-
hmph.
Edit: Clarification of the grump-
The tea at work, Lipton, perfectly fine tea, better than many fancy teas, but the bags now say:
150mg PROTECTIVE ANTIOXIDENTS*
--NATURALLY PER SERVING--
100% Natural Tea
*Flavonoids
Also, radio talking heads should refrain from making grunting or whining noises while the other talking heads are speaking. Or I should stop listening to OnPoint, because it clearly isn't about to turn into the Connection.
_
respond?
11:44:02 AM,
Friday 16 September 2005
-
I've been thinking. Zoning is a fundemental obligation of the government to it's citizens. There needs to be cheap housing, but it needs to be safe. Tension between homelessness and zoning. They just bulldozed a shantytown under a bridge in Boston. Like everything else, complicated.
_
respond?
04:57:16 PM,
Wednesday 14 September 2005
-
I've had it. Liberating, having had it. In particular, I've had it with the news blackout around our pending office move. I can see no reason for it, and am going to make noise until someone explains it to me in small words. We are moving some undisclosed time in October to some undisclosed location in the greater Boston area. I may well need another car, or a home office. Not a Vespa, mind you. Scooters are Dangerous, Unwise, Impractical and Not Done. There's a dealer in Boston, near the bubbletea / tea egg / bricktoast place.
_
respond?
(6)
03:22:15 PM,
Wednesday 14 September 2005
-
Textualism or Originalism applies to modern amendments as well. Why is this so difficult for people? Slavery is not an issue here. There is a difference between an amendment and a supreme court decision, but the distinction doesn't seem to have sunk in. And yes, I'm arguing with talk show callers again. I apologize.
_
respond?
02:55:45 PM,
Tuesday 13 September 2005
-
Terry Pratchett book tour in Cambridge on Friday at 7.
_
respond?
(1)
10:11:55 AM,
Tuesday 13 September 2005
-
If you're in the vicinity, and have ever tried to take a decent photograph, you should go see the Ansel Adams exhibit at the MFA. It has cured me of whatever lingering reluctance I had to photoshop. In particular, he cheated the light values in different sections of the pictures dramatically. A blue sky is never that dark. Of course, he used filters and darkroom fussery rather than photoshop, but still. His blacks are never black. there's always a touch of detail there. Until he got older, he never threw away a detail on a photograph. This makes composition harder, because you can't slide unwanted noise off into blankness. You also simply have to fiddle with each bit of the picture seperately. I was happy to see he struggled with trees as well. Most of his jawdropping pictures were taken with the sun very low in the sky. I don't get up early enough. It didn't have any of his color pictures, but there were some in the gift shop. It may be that color film wasn't good enough, but I think it was that color restricts the games you can play. For example, his Monolith picture was taken with a red filter.
The other trouble is that you can't look at pictures taken with large format film and feel entirely happy. I might add that there is no point looking at these pictures online. You want to stick your nose in them.
_
respond?
(2)
05:00:19 PM,
Tuesday 6 September 2005
-
site & script courtesy of Moss
