Taxes...done!

Finally received my 1099...only 12 days "late."

Release is peace

My Friends - RHCP

DE-9

Refreshing my memory of cables, specifically DE-9 serial cables.

Looking to mod the Rigol DS1052E to a DS1102E.

Ah, it looks like I can use a USB cable instead.

Rio, Carnival, Samba

Beautiful:

http://thedailywh.at/2012/02/26/tilt-shift-thing-of-the-day-2/

Running

Saw this article on LifeHacker last November and finally practicing.

For a video demonstration, see the NYT article.

"Imagine stepping over a log. The faster your pace, the bigger the log."

Negro modelo + lime

Yum : o )

Vitamin C is a bug that needs to be patched

Observations about the "ultimate tangle of dependencies" which represents the human body:

Vitamin C is a bug that needs to be patched
http://bbot.org/blog/archives/2012/02/24/the_pinnacle_of_evolution/

Research questions

Sitting in the lobby at Kemper Hall at UC-Davis and listening to a conversation between Computer Science Associate Professor Ian Davidson and a prospective doctoral student.

She asked lots of good questions/points:

• Do you fill all the Ph.D positions you have grants for?
• Do you travel? (answer: UC-Davis does not have many really famous faculty who travel a lot, like Stanford and Princeton)
• What happens if students get stuck? (answer: weekly two-hour meetings with peers; one-hour meetings with advisor)
• That seems really hard--how do you hope to solve it? (answer: I don't know)
• Does the grant project paper become part of the thesis? (answer: yes, students format the paper in journal format and it becomes a chapter of their thesis)

She seemed healthily skeptical and non-committal, asking questions which might give her confidence as to her chances at success. They left at 2:30 p.m. to visit the lab and speak with another faculty member.

He mentioned one of five projects dealt with a United States Navy grant dealing with a system designed to model how various actors (in this case, Taliban, Afghan army, US forces, and other NGO's) react to stimuli. The US Navy collects vast amounts of info and they have modeled fairly well the part of the reactions--they need to take the next step, which means figuring out how to drive to desired solutions.

He also relayed stories about his attendance at various conferences in which he used a red badge and someone had to go out in front of him and shout "foreign national" even though he holds dual-citizenship with the USA and Australia.

Homs

Blogger seems to load faster without embedding, so linking directly:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyQIv5wyYGE

(Via)

For science

Check, check, check....

"Among others, you have to have a bachelor’s degree in either math, engineering, biological or physical sciences, or computer science; you have to be a non-smoker; you have to speak English.  

Then if you are chosen, you have to live astronaut-style: in a small enclosure with strangers, with limited showers, writing daily reports.But in addition to the free food, those chosen for the study will be given cooking classes and taught to work in space’s microgravity environment. They will also earn round-trip travel to Hawaii, lodgings…and $5,000." 

NASA Will Pay You to Eat Astronaut Food for 4 Months
http://www.forbes.com/sites/carolpinchefsky/2012/02/22/nasa-will-pay-you-to-eat-astronaut-food-for-4-months/ 

Natural beauty

I love driving east across the Yolo causeway in the pre-dawn.

Today nature surprised me with high winds and a sequence of solitary birds flying over the interstate, giving the illusion of an arbor, an artificial tunnel laid out before me.

Everything seems fresh in the morning, the potential to begin anew.

Qubits

Scott Aaronson visits D-Wave Systems, Inc., in British Columbia, Canada:

http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=954

Fiverr

Fiverr: sort of a low-rent $20 millioniare:

http://fiverr.com/

Via: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3619387

On the proposed Sacramento arena

Arena backers will promise the moon to secure votes to move forward.

If and when they succeed, they will have to walk back everything as the dreams fail to come to fruition.

Thinking about this while driving past the 24-year-old Arco Arena this afternoon. How did the planners not get it right in 1998? How will they get it right this time 'round?

Also, too:

Sacramento County Grand Jury report
Discussing the shady dealings surrounding the 2006 failed tax Measures Q & R
http://www.scribd.com/doc/81505293/Kings-Interim-Report

Professional Sports Facilities, Franchisesand Urban Economic Development
University of Maryland, Baltimore County Economics Department Working Paper 03-103
http://www.scribd.com/doc/81499097/Professional-Sports-Facilities-Franchises-and-Urban-Economic-Development

Defragmented whitespace

Much better (a shot of Disk Defragmenter after using Defraggler):

After defragmenting whitespace

Larry'z Autoworks

Wanted to share kudos to Larry'z Autoworks of Sacramento, at the corner of 5th and X, for helping me out after I locked my keys in my car.

They did not hesitate when I asked to use the phone, seemed really cool, and even pointed out a few local places to get a bite to eat or drink while I waited.

LARRY'Z AUTOWORKS
Serving Sacramento for over 30 years!Specializing in all VolkswagensWe Service Foreign & Domestic Vehicles500 X Street
Corner of 5th and X Sts.
Sacramento, CA 95818
larry@autoworks.comcastbiz.net  <-- add a 'z' to the first part
916-447-2604

Sharing the love. Thanks!

Google-a-Day puzzles: Waitomo Glowworm Caves

Via today's Google-a-Day puzzle: "What creature uses nitric oxide to produce the starry effect you see in a New Zealand cave?"

The answer: glowworms, specifically Arachnocampa luminosa.

They live inside the Waitomo Glowworm Caves at Waitomo on the North Island of New Zealand.

Breathtaking:

Glowworms illuminate the Waitomo cave walls; via.

Film Movement DVD of the month club

If I had unlimited time and money...

http://www.filmmovement.com/filmclub.asp

Sushi-ya introduction

;o)

Tongue in cheek:

An introduction to sushi
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0b75cl4-qRE

 

Defraggler

Running Piriform's Defraggler (makers of CCleaner) seems to have the option I wanted: free space defragmentation.

The Freespace Fragmentation Problem 

Your hard drive's freespace will become fragmented over time as Windows writes, modifies, and deletes files. Eventually, the available drive space will not be located in a single contiguous block, but will be scattered in small fragments across the drive.
This causes further file fragmentation, since Windows must write new files as fragments in order to fit them into the available ranges of free clusters. 

Benefits of Freespace Defragmentation 

By defragmenting freespace on your hard drive, you'll notice improved file system performance whenever Windows writes new files. This process will also prevent new files from being fragmented in the future, to some extent.

How Defraggler Defragments Freespace

Defraggler moves files or large file fragments in order to create a single continuous block of free clusters. It starts from the beginning of the drive, filling empty blocks with file clusters taken from locations later on the drive. 

Defraggler has two options for defragmenting freespace:

1. Normal mode: Defraggler only moves whole files to fill the free blocks. This mode minimizes the possibility of file fragmentation.

1. Allow fragmentation mode: If Defraggler does not find any files that will fit completely into the free block, it will move file fragments instead. This mode is more efficient than the normal mode, but it may cause additional fragmentation.

Sysinternals Contig + Power Defragmenter GUI

Running Sysinternals Contig plus Power Defragmenter GUI via a StackOverflow comment.

Also, too, LifeHacker posted a list of the top five vote-getters (2009, FWIW).

In a nutshell, after defragging with Windows XP Disk Defragmenter, I see this:

when I expected to see something...more contiguous. Hoping Sysinternals takes care of things.

Note: I temporarily deleted the pagefile to allow defragmenting everything.

Update: Sysinternals Contig seems to do an adequate job defragmenting, but does not seem to defragment free space. Trying Defraggler.

Beers I want to try

James Fallows has posted links to beer the past week or two:

Dale's Pale Ale
Surly Furious

There is no planet B

Cute:

Via: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/02/11-0 , which reports French scientists have determined a 2.0 C increase in temperature by 2100 as the most optimistic scenario, with a worse-case scenario of 5.0 C.

Diaspora tags

Liking the ability to follow Diaspora tags:

https://diasp.org/tags/surreal

Diaspora

Signed up for a Diaspora account tonight.

Puppy linux

Downloading a Puppy Linux live ISO

Grateful Dead live

Grateful Dead concert closest to my date of birth:

http://www.archive.org/details/gd77-06-09.akg-bertrando.winters.26450.sbeok.shnf

Beautiful.

Analyzing Breakfast at Tiffany's: love, stability versus freedom, nature vs. culture, art as commodity

This morning  I read an analysis of Truman Capote's novella Breakfast at Tiffany's.

Major themes

• Stability vs. Freedom 
• The psychological struggle between the need for stability and the desire for freedom is perhaps the central concern of Breakfast at Tiffany's.
• Holly assumes the name "Holiday Golightly", which encapsulates her strategy of avoiding stability by making a holiday out of life, and abandoning relationships and responsibilities when they threaten to jeopardize her freedom.
• Her fantasy that one day she will have, "breakfast at Tiffany's," an absurdity since Tiffany's does not serve food, indicates her choice to avoid stability by casting it in the unattainable ideals of fantasy.
• ...Breakfast at Tiffany's suggests that both characters' pathologies stem from the sense of social exclusion common to people whose lifestyles do not conform to American convention...Holly and the narrator are similar insofar as for both of them, "home" has become a charged object of fantasy and longing.
• Pathologically anxious about being restrained by relationships or even a stable lifestyle, convinced that she belongs to no one and nothing, Holly's fear of the cage represents her fear of being imprisoned by others. That Holly's dislike of cages is introduced in Section 6, which explores Holly's deceptive nature, is important. By aligning examples of deception with images of imprisonment, Capote suggests that Holly's "phoniness" is a defense against making herself vulnerable to others, and hence, to the "cage" of an authentic relationship.
• Fred appears to symbolize Holly's sense of freedom; a recurrent fantasy of hers was that the two of them would escape to Mexico, where they would raise horses. Accordingly, at Fred's death, Holly allows Jose to move in, thus "caging" her in her own apartment. She transforms herself into an "un-Holly-like" version of a stable, domestic housewife. She furnishes her apartment - something she claimed she wouldn't do until she felt she "belonged" - and stops dying her signature multi-colored hair. She becomes pregnant and attempts to learn cooking and Portuguese. She repeats to the narrator that she is happy and that she loves Jose, claims that appear too emphatic to be entirely sincere.
• The disjunction here between Holly's thoughts and reality indicates that, unlike her role as a socialite, "domestic wife" is a fictional part that Holly plays badly.
• This remark is provoked by a sudden anger at his feeling "left out - a tugboat in dry dock while she, glittery voyager of secure destination, steamed down the harbor." The narrator recognizes his perpetual feeling of exclusion is, like a boat moored to a dock, holding him back. However, he does not take direct action to change this quality.
• Section 17 also contains arguably the most memorable - and important - episode in Breakfast at Tiffany's: Holly's abandonment of her unnamed cat and her subsequent bout of remorse. Leaving the cat on a Spanish Harlem street, Holly intends to act nonchalantly about discarding the cat but soon becomes frantic, overeager to be rid of him. She tells the cat to "beat it" and "fuck off" and urges the driver to speed away from the street where she has left him. When the narrator expresses his disgust at this callous act, Holly explains again that she and the cat "never belonged to each other" and that they were both "independents". Nevertheless, her affection for the cat indicated that Holly's attitude toward the animal was ambivalent: while they were both "independents", they shared a home and a relationship. In fact, throughout the novella, the cat is the only consistent presence in Holly's life. By rejecting the animal completely, Holly indicates that she is again unwilling to accept a close relationship and to let something "belong" to her.In previous sections and in her monologue in section 17, Holly indicates that she views her cat as she views herself, an essentially homeless, independent wanderer without a proper name or family. Her cruelty toward the animal thus appears to dramatize Holly's self-destructive tendencies: she acts out her anger and fear on the animal she sees as a figure for herself. Moreover, Holly's abandonment of the cat repeats her own rejection at the hands of her parents, friends, and, most recently, Jose.However, Holly's change of heart, which inspires her to tears and sends her searching for the cat in the rain suggests there is hope for her character. Realizing that she and the cat "did belong to each other...he was mine", Holly admits that no tragedy in her life had been as frightening as "not knowing what's yours until you've thrown it away." This confession presents Holly in her most genuine, honest moment in the novella, and marks the climax of her relationship with the narrator. She admits vulnerability and love for her cat and a need for a relationship in which there is mutual belonging. Strikingly, Holly confesses that both the "mean reds" and the "fat woman" are "nothing," dismissing her usual evasive metaphors for grief in favor of directly admitting her sadness.
• The concluding section of Breakfast at Tiffany's resolves several plot threads while leaving others open-ended. The novella returns to the frame narrative, which focuses on the question of Holly's presence in Africa. Speaking in the present, the narrator quotes from newspaper articles that documented Holly's discovery in Rio, which fortunately did not lead to another indictment. The death of Sally Tomato severs Holly's ties to the criminal case against her and the gossip surrounding her slowly dies down, resolving the plotline of Holly as a refugee. The plot thread that focused on Holly's personal struggle with identity and belonging, however, is left unresolved. The narrator reveals that while Holly wrote him soon after her escape, she had yet to find a permanent address. As he never heard from her again, he assumes that she either never found this address, or forgot about him. This turn of events refutes those of the previous section, which suggested that Holly was on the brink of a positive personal transformation. While she had recognized and acknowledged her need to love and be loved, Holly's postcard informs the narrator that she has returned to her old ways, using men for their money, unable and unwilling to find a stable home. That she did not stay in touch with the narrator retroactively casts a negative light on their friendship, and suggests that perhaps her feelings for him were not as strong as they had appeared.Despite the rather negative ending to Holly's tale, the conclusion of the novella is positive in tone. The narrator relates that a young man named Quaintance Smith moved into Holly's apartment, where he entertained as many male visitors as Holly without the judgment of Sapphia Spanella. The mention of his many "gentleman callers", along with the name "Quaintance" - a reference to George Quaintance, a painter of the 1940s and 1950s whose art was overtly homosexual in content - suggest that the new tenant is gay, practicing an unorthodox lifestyle that links him symbolically with both Holly and the narrator and extends the novella's theme of community between sexual outsiders beyond Holly's departure.The most positive aspect of the novella's ending, however, is that we learn that the narrator has maintained warm feelings toward his old friend. He keeps his promise to her and searches Spanish Harlem for her cat, which he sees behind the window of a homey-looking room. He muses that, along with a home, the cat likely has a name; he is "certain he'd arrived somewhere he belonged." A home and a name were, for Holly, the two signifiers of belonging, and the narrator hopes that Holly has achieved the same things. This sentiment demonstrates the narrator's continued affection for Holly even in her absence. That the novella concludes by exploring his warmth for Holly suggests that the novella was less about Holly than about how loving her transformed the narrator's own life.
• Naming as Identification 
• ...within the world of the novella, proper names symbolize both personal and public identity.
• Holly's use of a pseudonym and her reluctance to confer a name on her cat are thus symptoms of her general rejection of stability. She refuses to take or give a fixed identity until she feels at home in the world.
• Not only does the narrator learn of the poverty and abuse of Holly's childhood, which explains her perpetual sense of homelessness, but he also learns her real name - Lulamae Barnes - which no one else seems to know.
• Rebirth
• The motif of Christmas appears to be most linked to Holly, as her two pseudonyms - Holiday and Holly - are references to the "holy day" and the traditional plant of Christmas, respectively.
• Holly's narrative presents her as "re-born" into different personae and attitudes at several key points that correspond to Christmas. The gift exchange (1943) confirms her presence in the narrator's life, Sally's death (1944) severs her connection to New York and thus the narrator, and the discovery of the carving (1956) marks Holly's final transformation into an art object that inspires the narrator's own art: the written narrative that is Breakfast at Tiffany's.
• The Diversity of Love
• At the heart of Breakfast at Tiffany's is an exploration of the diverse kinds of love that define, enrich, and at times destroy adult relationships.
• Capote suggests non-romantic relationships are not superior because they lack sex, but because they are not based on need or desire.
• Breakfast at Tiffany's juxtaposes love and desire, drawing a sharp contrast between Holly's relationships governed by desire, and her relationships free from it.
• Her arrangements with Rusty Trawler, Jose, Mag, and Berman appear quite different, but all are based on need. Jose desires Holly sexually, Rusty needs Holly to fulfill his quasi-sexual infantile complex, Mag desires to share Holly's social contacts and apartment, and Berman seeks to profit from Holly's potential as an actress. 
• Conversely, Holly desires what these people can offer her in return, be it money, professional contacts, or merely help around her apartment. 
• While such relationships appear solid, all crumble, more or less, when Holly is incarcerated and no longer able to fulfill her companions' desires.
• Demonstrating the sincerity of the bond between a straight woman and two gay men, Breakfast at Tiffany's implicitly questions the narrow definition of love as heterosexual romance that is as dominant now as it was in 1950s America.
• While Holly had described her bouts of the "mean reds", her behavior throughout the novella is remarkably upbeat and nonchalant, illustrating her minimal personal investment in her relationships. However, her rage at Fred's death indicates that her attachment to her brother was quite real and strong. The extremity of Holly's despair further suggests why she avoids permanent relationships, as her experience of pain is apparently intense and self-destructive. Avoiding real attachments is perhaps Holly's way to protect herself against the kind of pain she feels at her brother's death.
• ...the narrator is overcome with love for Holly, and realizes that his desire for her happiness is greater than his own need to keep her with him.
• As Holly and the narrator ride alongside each other, they both experience an exhilarating high, and, seeing Holly's happiness, realizes that he loves her so much that he values her happiness above his own, even if that means the end of their friendship.
• Nature vs. Culture  
• Holly identifies with nature - wild, untamed, and unknowable - over the structured, convention-bound world of human culture.
• Animals, both wild and domestic, symbolize Holly's rejection of social convention.
• The cage, a symbol of the human imprisonment of nature, remains an object of anxiety for Holly throughout the novel, and she refuses to even look at animals in the zoo.
• While Holly considers herself a "wild thing", inherently unsuited to the rules that govern human culture, it appears that this is, at least in part, a facade. 
• Holly is more than willing to be domesticated when she is offered the right price, and settles down more or less happily with the wealthy Jose. 
• Her reliance on fine things and entertainment, and her worship of Tiffany's, a near-universal symbol of New York capitalist excess, indicates that Holly's appetites are not those of an animal, but a woman remarkably invested in the products of American culture.
•  This ambivalence is suggested by another recurring animal motif: horses. 
• The horse is a long-established figure for human control over nature and animal instinct; for Holly, horses appear to represent her control over men. 
• Her first boyfriend after running away from Doc is a horse jockey, she keeps volumes of books about horses on her bookshelf as "research" for her involvements with male suitors, and she fantasizes about running off to Mexico, where she plans to train horses with her brother Fred. 
• She marks the end of her friendship with the narrator with a horseback ride, in which she demonstrates her skill as a rider. 
• In each case, Holly has emotional or sexual control over the male character in the episode. 
• When the narrator's bolts and runs away wildly, it prefigures Holly's loss of Jose when she is arrested later that day. 
• While Holly associates herself with nature and the "wild things" she identifies with, the novella presents Holly in a more complex relationship with the natural world. 
• In her relationships with men, she acts the part of both wild animal and trainer, achieving emotional and sexual control over her male admirers while evading responsibility and commitment.
• Through the dialogue between Holly and Mag, a "very conventional person", the reader's sense of Holly's unorthodox nature is heightened. Mag's embarrassment at discussing sex, her confessed sexual passivity (she prefers to leave the lights off during sex), and blind patriotism stand in sharp contrast to Holly's candor, sexual assertiveness (she states boldly that "men are beautiful"), and indifference toward her home country, a dangerous sentiment during the heightened patriotism of war time America. Holly's statement that she would "rather be natural" than normal indicates another recurring concern of the novel: that definitions of what is "normal" are arbitrary, and serve to control and restrain the natural freedom of the human spirit.
• As the narrator observes Holly in the library, he is reminded of another girl he once knew: the practical, introverted Mildred Grossman. He conveys that the two women were opposites: Mildred a "top-heavy realist" and Holly a "lopsided romantic". Through his comparison, the narrator reveals his account of human personality. While he believes that most people are malleable, their nature fluid and ever shifting, both Mildred and Holly were unchanging, their distinct personalities formed early and thus becoming unalterable. This is a provocative observation when we consider that Holly's identity is pathologically unstable and almost completely fraudulent. By suggesting that Holly's basic character was complete and unchanging, the narrator illuminates Berman's claim that Holly is a "real phony". Holly's fraudulence and instability is perhaps not a cover, but her true nature; her "phoniness" is a very real, essential part of her basic character.
• She confesses that while she never intended to return to Texas with Doc, she slept with him the night before, since he gave her confidence as a child, and "anyone who ever gave you confidence, you owe them a lot." She explains that she took him to the bus station that morning, and, as they were saying goodbye, she realized that was still Lulamae, "stealing turkey eggs and running through a brier patch.""Never love a wild thing," Holly tells Joe. She explains that Doc was always nurturing wild animals, and that the more love he gave them, the stronger they became. Drunkenly, Holly states that "if you let yourself love a wild thing...[you'll] end up looking at the sky." Realizing that her husband must be back in Texas already, Holly invites the narrator to join her in a toast to Doc.
• Holly's drunken monologue in Joe's bar is one of the novella's famous passages. It gives the reader further insight into the initial attraction between Doc and the young Holly. She explains that Doc was "always hauling home wild things...a hawk with a hurt wing...a full-grown bobcat with a broken leg." He loved to nurture and nurse these animals, despite the fact they only abandoned him once they were back to health. "Never love a wild thing," Holly warns Joe, "[you'll] end up looking at the sky." Holly, a starving and homeless child when Doc adopted her, is thus aligned with the wild animals he also loved. Considering herself a "wild thing", she indicates that she believes that, like an animal, she is inherently untamable, and that it is her essential nature to run away from those who love her. In this way, Holly admits to her fear of commitment while suggesting that, like an animal, she is not responsible for her behavior. Directing her warning at Joe, Holly subtly indicates that he should prepare to be hurt when she inevitably leaves her life in New York.
• As during the escape from Woolworth's, the narrator challenges his own boundaries and breaks habit by engaging in one of Holly's typically "carefree" activities. His pure happiness during both the theft and the horseback ride indicates that Holly's unconventional and spontaneous attitude is what is missing from the narrator's own life, and suggests that his attachment to Holly is partly a wish to become more like her.
• A central concern of Breakfast at Tiffany's is the impossibility of objectivity. Lies, gossip, and stories, all claiming to be true, play crucial roles in transmitting information between characters and shaping how they think about others and themselves. By quoting at length from the newspaper coverage of Holly's arrest, Capote demonstrates that even the purportedly "objective" information of the newspaper is itself prone to the same kind of errors, exaggerations, and biases as the "fictional" stories he writes, and the "fraudulent" tales Holly tells. For example, the narrator explains, Holly was arrested in his bathroom, yet the articles claim that she was found in her "glamorous apartment." The press distorts reality for its own purposes, as does Holly and, perhaps, the narrator itself. This section suggests that story telling is inherently subjective.
• The loyalty of Joe and the narrator in this section validates the relationships between gay men and women, demonstrating the strength of love that is not founded on sexual or financial need.
• Section 16, set in the hospital where Holly is recovering from her miscarriage, explores Holly's pathology in depth. Unable to discuss her sadness and fear directly, she invents another metaphor, the "fat woman", to explain her depression to the narrator. She confides that it was the "fat woman" who had overtaken her after Fred's death, and asks, "[now] do you see why I went crazy and broke everything?" Holly also defends herself against sadness with physical artifice, readying herself for Jose's letter by applying meticulous makeup, jewelry, and her signature dark glasses. As she transforms herself, the narrator notices that her child-like appearance hardens and she appears "armored." The makeup symbolizes Holly's constant attempts to "armor", or protect herself against emotion by assuming different, artificial identities. The presence of three Italian women in the hospital room, none of whom can understand English and who seem to misinterpret the narrator as Holly's lover, are figures for the external world in which Holly feels perpetually misunderstood.
• Art as Commodity 
• Holly is the novella's major symbol for art. 
• Holly, a fictional person of her own making, is a woman who sells her time, affections, and even her body for money. 
• She views herself as a commodity, as something that can and should be bought and sold. 
• She is art as a commodity, and she extends this reasoning to the narrator's writing.
• Her persona is entirely self-constructed. 
• Even her signature appearance is, as the narrator discovers, the result of deliberate artifice. 
• Her hair is dyed, she diets, and conceals her poor eyesight with stylish dark glasses. 
• Aside from concealing her true identity, Holly's self-fashioning implies that she sees herself an artificial object, an art work of her own creation. 
• It is this artificial persona that the wealthy men in Holly's life pay for, establishing Holly as not only an art object, but as one that is sold as a commodity in the sexual marketplace. 
• The narrator's disgust at Holly's plea for him to "make money" is thus an expression of his larger dilemma as an artist whose position in mass-consumer society is precarious. Holly, a commodity herself, represents the pressure of commercial society upon artists to abandon their ideological and aesthetic ideals in favor of economic profit.
• Information and storytelling
• ...the reader is compelled to read Breakfast at Tiffany's not as a story about Holly, but as a story about the narrator and his investment in their friendship.

Mind blown: Breakfast at Tiffany's and The A-Team

Mind blown: not only did George Peppard star alongside Audrey Hepburn in the 1961 romantic comedy film Breakfast at Tiffany's, but he would later go on to star for five seasons of 1980's TV series The A-Team as Col. John Hannibal Smith.

"You know what's wrong with you, Miss Whoever-you-are? You're chicken, you've got no guts. You're afraid to stick out your chin and say, "Okay, life's a fact, people do fall in love, people do belong to each other, because that's the only chance anybody's got for real happiness." You call yourself a free spirit, a "wild thing," and you're terrified somebody's gonna stick you in a cage. Well baby, you're already in that cage. You built it yourself. And it's not bounded in the west by Tulip, Texas, or in the east by Somali-land. It's wherever you go. Because no matter where you run, you just end up running into yourself. [takes out the ring and throws it in Holly's lap]"

"I love it when a plan comes together."

The Porch Mardi Gras grand opening celebration

Dawn and I celebrated Valentines Day this evening at The Porch.

I drank something called the Hurricane Haunt: Bacardi, Myers dark rum, blood orange puree, grapefruit juice, and pineapple juice. It tasted like Kool-Aid.

Dawn ordered SoCo Squeeze: Southern Comfort, amaretto, and sweet and sour.

As had happened on our previous trip on Christmas Day, the waitress brought us a complimentary amuse-bouche: a tapenade with crostini.

Dawn tried the Porch Fried Chicken: airline breast stuffed with duck confit & goat cheddar, yukon gold mash, sautéed greens, brown sugar beurre blanc.

I ate Crawfish Purloo: sautéed crawfish, peppers, onions, andouille sausage, carolina red rice, blue crab gravy, and grilled chicken breast. I also ordered a side of collard greens.

For dessert we tried the Red Velvet Brownie with vanilla ice cream and cream cheese frosting.

We sat outside on the heated porch; we felt OK for 8 C (46 F) weather.

Probably should mention the woman passer-by who ripped a vinyl sign off the porch railing next to our table and danced with it to the sound of the Mardi Gras music. She sat down on the other side of the porch from our table and began yelling vulgarities. The busboy noticed but before someone came outside, she had knocked over a table. A confrontation ensued, with the woman picking up a chair and the manager escorting her to the sidewalk. She hovered for a minute or two longer, then departed up the street. Disturbing; so much suffering on display.

Game face of the day

Well played, sir. :o)

Via:

Game face of the day
http://thedailywh.at/2012/02/15/game-face-of-the-day/

Watching videos at faster speeds

Enounce, Inc. makes a product called MySpeed which allows users to speed up or slow down video playback.

Via:

Watch Online Videos in Half the Time
http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2011/04/watch-online-videos-in-half-the-time/

Distraction-free breaks

Via: http://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2011/11/28/focus-without-caffeine/

Needing breaks is an inevitability. And, sometimes, those breaks make sense. Taking 15 minutes away from a bug can help you think about the problem in a new way. Clearing your head can help you regain focus. 

However, most people take stupid breaks. Not only in the timing of their activities, but the types of things they do on a break, all create opportunities to completely kill the momentum they established earlier. 

Distraction-free breaks means taking breaks that won’t kill your momentum, so you can boost your energy back up without getting caught in a detour that will end up in procrastination. 

The first rule of taking breaks is to never break with an activity that is engaging. Television, internet, video games, Facebook, phone texting, email or anything else which will occupy your mind. The reason for this is that you don’t want to replace the momentum you helped build with some other task. 

Instead, I’ve found it far more effective to focus on breaks that are relaxing, but that I can easily snap out of to go back to work. Taking a short walk, drinking a glass of water or stretching are all good candidates. I’ve also found short naps helpful too, but they don’t seem to work for all people, so use with caution. 

Now, this might sound like I’ve eliminated anything fun from the break. What’s the point of taking a break if you don’t really enjoy it? 

But that is the point. Breaks aren’t about having fun, that’s what having real time off is for. Breaks are about strategically recouping your energy and focus to reattack the work at hand. Leave the television, games and entertainment for when you can relax guilt-free in the evenings.

Blue suede shoes

Noticed someone wearing blue suede shoes last Wednesday and they really popped.

Zappos: http://www.zappos.com/blue-suede-shoes#!/blue-suede-shoes-men-blue-shoes/CK_XAToCzhBCAp4BegLTBIIBApIWwAEC4gIFGAEPCAc.zso?t=blue+suede+shoes&s=recentSalesStyle/desc/

Cheapest way to eat

What represents the cheapest source of eating healthily?

People seem to follow a variety of health gurus; I have compiled some info, below.

Goals

1. Provides 2000 calories per day
2. Maintains ratio of about 30% Protein : 30% Fats : 40% Protein
3. Meets standard vitamin recommendations for A, C, E, K, Thiamin, Riboflavin, Niacin, Folate, B12, Pantothenic acid
4. Meets standard mineral recommendations for Calcium, Iron, Magnesium, Phosphorus, Potassium, Sodium, Zinc, Copper, Manganese, Selenium
5. Meets standard fiber recommendation
6. Keeps saturated fat to a minimum
7. Keeps cholesterol to a minimum
8. No coupons; too much of a time sink 

Breakfast

Oats with raisins and banana: about $0.12/serving

Eggs

Lunch

Sandwiches

Salads

Dinner

Rice and beans extravaganza: cook about four cups for a weeks worth

Frozen veggies

Snacks

Whey protein shake, flavored with vanilla, chocolate, what have you

Nuts

Tomato juice

Fruits

Yogurt

Beverages

Tap water

General

Multi-vitamin

Vitamin D3

Michael Pollen: "Eat a variety of fresh, unprocessed foods. Focus mostly on produce and, if you’re an omnivore, choose high-quality meats."

Staples: beans and rice

broccoli and sweet potatoes

olive oil or canola oil

sunflower seeds

calcium and B12: supplement, nutritional yeast (B12),

Via:

Eating healthy for $3 a day

http://www.miketuritzin.com/writing/eating-healthily-for-3-a-day/

How To Live (Comfortably) on $36 A Month For Food

http://andrewhy.de/how-to-live-comfortably-on-36-a-month-for-food/

16 ways to eat healthy while keeping it cheap

http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/2007/07/30/16-ways-to-eat-healthy-while-keeping-it-cheap/

Tonsillectomy Confidential: doctors ignore polio epidemics and high school biology

http://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/tonsillectomy-confidential-do.html

AnyLeaf

http://www.anyleaf.com/grocery-deals

Extinct surnames

Have tossed about the idea of changing our surname for some time.

The thought crossed my mind this evening of reviving an extinct surname.

One article from 1914 claimed, given an infinite amount of time, all surnames eventually will become the same.

Yellow Magic Orchestra

Listening to electronica via Yellow Magic Orchestra: http://j.mp/yNsphR

Really like the positive energy associated with their music. : o )

"Is war as old as gravity? If I love peace do I have to love trees?" http://j.mp/zTpzjc

Jiskefet - cricket engelse sport

I love it:



High camp. :o) Jiskefet represents a Dutch comedy group.

Via: http://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/pkqht/how_cricket_looks_for_most_people/

The reddit community provided an explanation:

Alright let's see if I can break it down a bit easily. Most people get lost at the explanation because they just honestly don't want to try and learn, otherwise, just like any other sport, the rules are not that hard to learn. 

So in cricket there's these things called runs, almost, but not exactly the same as in baseball. In baseball, you have 4 bases, and you always run to the next base. In cricket however, there are two bases, and a person from the batting team is on either base. At each opportunity, they are allowed to run back and forth from their respective base, for each successful crossing, they get a run. Now in baseball, you have people manning each base to get the batter out, in cricket, they have these things called stumps. They're just three wooden sticks out of the ground. You have to hit the stump while the batter is away from the base, just like in baseball. 

Now in cricket, you have a circular field, and 11 players in the bowling/pitching team. How things are done in cricket is, the bowler runs to pitch, while in baseball, they usually just stand in one spot. Now once the ball has been hit, if the ball goes to the boundary while rolling on the ground, it amounts to 4 runs mentioned previously. If the ball goes out of the park like a home run, that's 6 runs. 

The whole point of the game is to continue scoring runs, without getting batted out. The batting side has 10 continuous batsmen, and there is only one inning change, instead of 3 batters, and 9 inning changes in baseball. There is also a limit to the number of "pitches", limited to 50 overs in a One Day International game. One over is 6 pitches or rather bowls, that can be done by one pitcher/bowler. The bowler must be changed after every six pitches, and this goes on for either 50 overs. Or until all 10 batsmen are batted out. 

I hope that helps, the rules are fairly similar to baseball, people just fail to bother trying to understand them. 

Edit: Also next to the runs will be something called overs, like Over 20.4 -> that means its the 20th over and the 4th ball in the over. Two more bowls, and there is a pitcher change. 

Edit 2: I am an American, and I learned! It really is possible, and its fun.

40 threads

A cute web site:

http://40threads.com

Google-a-Day puzzles: Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene (1596)

Via: http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2012/02/agad021212/

The puzzle for Feb 12: 

"Reading one stanza a night, how long would it take to finish the first poem written using Spenserian stanzas?"

The Faerie Queene, written by Edmund Spenser and published first in 1590 (books 1-3) and second in 1596 (books 1-6), seems to represent the first poem to use Spenserian stanzas. He wrote it with the intention of fashioning a "noble person in vertuous and gentle discipline". It represents one of the longest poems of the English language and Spenser died prior to completing it. Only a fragment of book seven remains.

The summary of each canto for books 1-3 makes for fascinating reading.

Books 1-7 total stanzas:

3,810 (stanzas in cantos only) or
3,847 (stanzas in cantos and book prefaces)

3,810 days = 10.4314343 years
3,847 days = 10.5327369 years

Accessing an online edition of the text which enumerates each stanza by canto for books 1-3:

Book one stanza count, by canto

Preface:     4
Canto I:    55
Canto II:   45
Canto III:  44
Canto IV:   51
Canto V:    53
Canto VI:   48
Canto VII:  52
Canto VIII: 50
Canto IX:   54
Canto X:    68
Canto XI:   55
Canto XII:  42

Total stanzas: 617 (cantos only) or 621 (all)

Book two stanza count, by canto

Preface:     5
Canto I:    61
Canto II:   46
Canto III:  46
Canto IV:   46
Canto V:    38
Canto VI:   51
Canto VII:  66
Canto VIII: 56
Canto IX:   60
Canto X:    77
Canto XI:   49
Canto XII:  87

Total stanzas: 683 (cantos only) or 688 (all)

Book three stanza count, by canto

Preface:     5
Canto I:    67
Canto II:   52
Canto III:  62
Canto IV:   61
Canto V:    55
Canto VI:   54
Canto VII:  61
Canto VIII: 52
Canto IX:   53
Canto X:    60
Canto XI:   55
Canto XII:  45 (or 47, via 1590 edition)

Total stanzas: 677 (cantos only) or 682 (all)

Books 1-3 total stanzas: 1,977 (cantos only) or 1,991 (all)

Accessing an online edition of the text which enumerates each stanza by canto for books 4-6:

Book four stanza count, by canto

Preface:     5
Canto I:    54
Canto II:   54
Canto III:  52
Canto IV:   48
Canto V:    46
Canto VI:   47
Canto VII:  47
Canto VIII: 64
Canto IX:   41
Canto X:    58
Canto XI:   53
Canto XII:  35

Total stanzas: 599 (cantos only) or 604 (all)

Book five stanza count, by canto

Preface:    11
Canto I:    30
Canto II:   54
Canto III:  40
Canto IV:   51
Canto V:    57
Canto VI:   40
Canto VII:  45
Canto VIII: 51
Canto IX:   50
Canto X:    39
Canto XI:   65
Canto XII:  43

Total stanzas: 565 (cantos only) or 576 (all)

Book six stanza count, by canto

Preface:     7
Canto I:    47
Canto II:   48
Canto III:  50
Canto IV:   40
Canto V:    41
Canto VI:   44
Canto VII:  50
Canto VIII: 51
Canto IX:   46
Canto X:    44
Canto XI:   51
Canto XII:  41

Total stanzas: 553 (cantos only) or 560 (all)

Book seven stanza count, by canto

Canto I:    not extant
Canto II:   not extant
Canto III:  not extant
Canto IV:   not extant
Canto V:    not extant
Canto VI:   55
Canto VII:  59
Canto VIII: 2

Total stanzas: 116 (cantos only)

Books 4-7 total stanzas: 1,833 (cantos only) or 1,856 (all)

Hands Down, the Best “It Gets Better” Video You Have Seen

Via:

http://www.balloon-juice.com/2012/02/11/hands-down-the-best-it-gets-better-video-you-have-seen/

Police sketches of famous literary characters

:o)

Edward Rochester, via police sketch software

Via: http://thecomposites.tumblr.com/

Periodic table of vegetables

I kind of want one:

Via: http://naomiweissman.com/fft.htm

Radio Songs

Heard on 88.9 KXPR out of Sacramento, CA:

Edouard Lalo: Norwegian Rhapsody (Rapsodie Norvegienne) - Royal Philharmonic Orchestra; Yondani Butt, conductor; Label: ASV; Number: 709 BUY Audio

Felix Mendelssohn: Hebrides Overture in B minor Opus 26 - Montreal Symphony Orchestra; Charles Dutoit, conductor; Label: London/Decca; Number: 417541 BUY Audio

Radio Songs

Heard on 88.9 FM KXPR out of Sacramento, CA:

Exotic: Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov: Procession of the Sardar Opus 10 - Baltimore Symphony Orchestra; David Zinman, conductor; Label: Telarc; Number: 80378 BUY BUY

Philip Lane: Suite of Cotswold Folkdances - Royal Ballet Sinfonia; Gavin Sutherland, conductor; Label: ASV; Number: 2126 BUY