justbeast

I don't really have any posting filters, so far. Anything either private, or related to sex, I tend to post friends-only, or not at all.

However, I think it's time I created a Diary filter for myself, to serve as a simple book of days, a record of what I did, where went, and what I thought, each day. More and more, my memory keeps drawing blanks for what happened to me even as little as a week ago, even the really fun stuff that I want to retain! So I need a place to record my days (and from which to summarize monthly scrapbook entries). And I don't want to just post it on my regular journal -- most of the daily things are of interest only to me.

The filter is opt-in. I don't expect it to be interesting for anybody except my family and a few friends, but if you're curious, it's there for your stalkery pleasure.


Edit: Poll is closed (since I don't want to keep refreshing it to find new people).
To be added to the filter, leave a comment and you'll be added.

A few months ago, I came across a mention of a CS high school opening in NYC: New York City gets a Software Engineering High School.
I think this is a brilliant idea. High school (and, honestly, even earlier, in middle school) is the ideal time to learn programming. (I lucked into an AP Computer Science class early on in highschool, and it changed my life. I've always been interested in computers, but I changed my college plans from pre-med to comp sci right then and there).

I wonder how they'll structure their curriculum?

(My next thought, of course, was: Now we need one of those here in Portland, ME!)
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Last weekend, at an Easter party (with a small horde of actual kids! hunting for eggs!), I met a guy who studied learning psychology (and apparently helped translate a book on the subject by a famous Russian academic. I lost the title, but he said he'd lend me the book).

Anyways, he pointed me towards a very interesting project: the Baxter Academy for Technology and Science, a tech charter school opening right here in Portland ME (down the street from the ferry, actually)!

This is very interesting and promising, and I hope they include a healthy dose of computer science in their curriculum.
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The other day, on a Ruby user group mailing list, somebody mentioned that they have a bunch of tech books to donate, and they'd prefer to give it to a charity or an educational organization. There were several suggestions (a public library, an underfunded tech college).
But one I thought was very interesting: the MOUSE.org project.

MOUSE seems to be a set of programs to help high school students learn leadership and tech skills, centering around a student-run Help Desk (which, in addition, helps the school save on technology costs).

Again, very interesting, I'm going to file this on here in case I have a chance to introduce something similar here in Portland.

Mirrored from my standalone blog, computingjoy.com

For those of you fond of maps, real-time Earth representations, and wind, (like I am), check this out:

Real Time US Wind Map

(thanks to omnia_mutantur for showing this to me).

Question for my artist friends:

Do you use an iPad for sketching? If yes, what's the best iPad stylus? And what iOS software do you use to sketch or doodle?

If not, and you use some other tablet (Bamboo or whatnot), which one do you use? And what software (meaning, anything else besides Photoshop?)

So much I want to write about! Not sure where to start. So, here, in random order:

* s00j (plus her boy) and stealthcello visited last week! Oh my god, it was so great to see them. I only caught a brief glimpse of them during Boskone, so it was really nice to have them over our house for several days.

* The house concert went off beautifully. (As hosts, there's always that anxiety of "well what if nobody comes"? But it was a ton of people; we ran out of chairs).

* I got to sing. With Sooj and Betsy. In the pitch dark of an abandoned WWII fort. Like.. we stood around in the dark and made music, all of us. This wasn't an official concert thing, just a private thing. I.. don't even know how to describe it, except wow.

* Cat is gone off to NYC for the week. I'm missing her crazy-intensely. And so many things make me miss her more - reading LJ, listening to music, reading books.. argh.

* So, a while ago, in spring or summer, a group of us (atheorist, @sarah_hines and I, (joined later by Cat)) started an informal meetup called Self-Inflicted Data. Where we met each week, and just reported various numbers to each other that we were tracking. The number change from person to person and from project to project. They're things like - weight, hours of sleep, number of pomodoros done on a particular project, number of pages of thesis written, etc, etc. I'd like to do a whole post on this group, so I'm just putting this in as a reminder. But guys.. it has helped me SO much. It's a huge motivation for me, from week to week. (In fact, the only reason I got the time/effort together to write this post is cause I promised I'd write at least 1 post for this week).

* I have been THOROUGHLY enjoying Cat's Girl Unlocked / Unfuck My Life project. I have, of course, been inspired to put together my own (overly?) ambitious Beast Unfucks His Life project, starting now (while Cat is away).

* (related to above) I've started running again! I'm FINALLY over the insane months-long cold I've had all winter. I cannot express how grateful I am for that, or how tired I was of being sick.

I go to a lot of conventions. (Some years more than others, but at least half a dozen per year, usually). Being a devil OCD a creature of order, I start trying to organize them in my head, and rate them against each other.

I usually consider a con pretty successful (for me personally -- judging to see if it was successful for yuki_onna, career-wise, happens on different axes), if it supplies a certain critical mass of the following things:

* I get to meet up with the people I wanted to see (usually friends we only get to see at those cons, locals, etc)
* I like the dealer room / art show. I manage to find some interesting book/art loot to haul (though hopefully not overspend).
* How's the programming look? How many of the panels would I like to go to? (I don't actually attend that many, since my main goal at cons is to help out Cat. But I still look to see how many are tempting).
* If I do make it to a panel, how was it?
* I meet interesting new people, get exposed to new ideas, have revelations.

So we went to Boskone this past weekend. And I really liked it, it was interesting and fairly devoid of stress. A success, by my parameters above!

Thoughts form Boskone:

* yagathai is amazing and super helpful, and has great friends. Cat and I had to organize a surprise SWFA party on no notice (ie, it was a surprise to us, that we had to run it, not that it was a surprise party). Mike stepped in (and also had a posse of awesome BwB friends who pitched in) and helped us out -- we threw together a pretty great party, considering the time limitations.

* Got to meet up with omnia_mutantur briefly, and chat

* Met a new favorite artist! Coralynn Rowell of robotlovenoises.com -- she was doing cute robot sketches for $5 a pop. I picked up a print of that tree painting that's on the front page, plus a couple others, and we also won an art auction original piece from her. I think I know who I'd like to ask to design my next large tattoo!

* OMG got to see s00j and Betsy Tinney again! Super briefly -- we had panels and meetings to set up during most of their concerts, but still! I missed them so much. They're coming to stay at our house in a few days, though, and we're having a house concert on the island (which means you should come!). In fact, we'll see them tonight at another house concert at Kyth's house in Concord.

* LOVED the dealer room / art room. They put the two areas together, plus the con suite, plus the gaming area, all in a huge open space in the basement. Loved it! You walk down there, and it's such a feeling of richness/plenty, loot and food and art as far as the eye can see. Plus it makes for a central social point of the con, very helpful. I wish more cons would do something similar (I understand not all hotels / spaces support that).

* Went to an interesting panel (on Writing for MMOs), recommended Neal Stephenson's REAMDE novel to everybody.

* Got a chance to hang out and talk more with Charlie Stross and Ian Tregillis.

* Got to see Lawrence Schimel again (haven't seen him in years, since that Wiscon in like 06)!

Anyways, it was a great con (my first Boskone, actually). Still much to think about and process.

This weekend, I:

* Was still lightly sick (stupid cough won't go away). Plus, got bonus food poisoning, for the first time in years and years. What the hell! That never happens to me. Also, I don't hork easily! (Which is a bad thing, when you need to). Boooo.

* Started a D&D campaign with Cat! Somewhat on short notice, so I've been ingesting massive amounts of Eberron sourcebooks (plus refreshing D&D 3.5 rules in my head). (I'm DMing).
I'm super excited about it (plus, there's rumours that we're starting a D&D campaign with friends in town, in addition), and of course very nervous (I still don't have much experience DMing).
Have any of you guys played in the Eberron setting? What do you think of it? (I'm really digging it so far, it has a Final Fantasy 7 sort of feel to it).

For various ridiculous reasons (that I can't remember now, since sleep dep causes short term memory loss), I haven't been sleeping much this past week. (A trend that has, blessedly, ended, today, finally a sweet 8 hrs). Here's what I do remember, though:

* We set up our Xmas New-Year's tree last weekend! It's enormous and beautiful and lurks in the library, portending good things.

* Our performance of Under Milk Wood (by Dylan Thomas) went off smashingly, this past Saturday. Hey, our goal was "as long as we have more audience members than cast members, we win". But we filled up the (beautiful slightly creepy New England) church quite nicely! The play itself (a reader's theater type thing, no sets) went off as perfect as we'd want. (I was blind Captain Cat, plus did sound effects on the ipad). The audience seemed to love it -- though the poetry of the play can be pretty dense at times, they laughed at all the right places, and raved about it afterwards.

* The cast party afterwards was really fun. In our hustle to get everything ready for the play, we forgot about food (will definitely order pizza, next time), so everybody was starving, but it turned out ok, cause I made massive choc-chip/butterscotch waffles for everybody.

* More importantly, we beta tested our hot tub! The electrics have been finally hooked up on Friday, we filled it up that night and set it heating. One, I was really worried if it was level enough (we dug the pit, filled gravel and sand, and put in concrete slabs, and leveled everything, all by ourselves). But even completely filled, it was perfectly level from every angle, whew. I mixed up the chemicals from the manual, cursing the complexity and my misspent youth of almost-failing out of AP Chemistry.

Anyways, we tried it out Saturday night! The night was really cold, and the hot tub cover had frost on it, but the water was quite toasty, and we could look at the stars. I still need to tweak the pH levels, but it's a promising start.

* Cat's mom visited over the weekend, for the play, and is flying out today. One of the places we took her to dinner was Grace, a restaurant built inside of a gorgeous church. Wow, I really admire the design (and the drinks were fantastic).

Food <i>slays</i> me sometimes.

You ever notice how, you're just walking along, you come home from work, lame dogs want to be walked, blah, blah, and then you sit down to eat, and WHOOMF. The world just stops for a second, and the camera rotates around 360 degrees to highlight your bewilderment, and possibly green Matrix sigils start bleeding from the corners of the room, just to highlight that you're <i>on</i> to something.

<i>It's so fucking good.</i> 

And your brain stops for a bit, because this is a culinary equivalent of <i>a sudden punch in the face when discussing the weather at the watercooler</i>. But in a good way.

It's SO out of proportion to what you expected, to the average intensity of experience of a Monday night. And your language centers blank out, and meanwhile, the inner gremlin of your mind calls up internal tech support and asks "Help. What is going on here?" and tech support says "Uh.. we have no idea. Just reboot and give it 20 minutes."

So last night was like that. And I'm still not quite sure how to properly convey to you how good that pasta was.

It involved.. well, pasta. That's the easy bit. But also these /perfect/ slices of portobello mushrooms in Marsala wine sauce (with some vanilla balsamic vinegar, I think). 

ALSO braised beef. In PUMPKIN BEER. Like.. I'm not sure you understand. Our pumpkin beer is really good BY ITSELF. And then there was this beef braised in it, in the oven, for hours. 

And the pasta, and the beef, and the mushrooms, and the sauce, all combined into something utterly ridiculously good. And I was hungry, of course, sure. But.. yeah. Out of proportion.

The other day, jwz posted about Disposable 3d-printed spiderbots.



My immediate thoughts were:

* Ha. This very much reminds me of Patrick Farley's "Spiders" comics (about the alt-history US invasion of Afganistan with spider robots).
Original wayback machine version
New version of the comic

* The article mentions that the spiders were largely manufactured using 3D printing (specifically, selective laser sintering (SLS)). The question immediately begs itself --
How far is this from the capabilities of the current open-source 3D printing projects (like the RepRap / Thingiverse stuff that exceptionshift and matt_arnold (?) plays around with?  If far, how expensive are SLS capable machines?

Also, I love how cheap spiderbots follow the Apple design aesthetic.