Circadian Shift

Consolation Champs is giving away a book on CSS. All that the contestants have to do is submit up to three haikus. Here are the three that I bashed out:

following standards
is it too good to be true?
one can hope for the best

a CSS book
would be really good for me
my blog looks like crap

information junkie
can't get enough books to read
add more to the pile

Well, it could be worse...

Hey, where's my blog?

This is only a test.

Been listening to a track by the Balanescu Quartet that I downloaded from the site by the guy with the spider behind his toilet. It's a cold, austere, moody 20th Century work for string quartet that has an almost cinematic quality to it (in fact, speaking voices murmur in the background behind the strings). At 3.30 in the morning, it makes for an ideal Stolichnaya moment, but I have no Stoli here in the hovel, so the point is academic.

(OK, I know Balanescu sounds more like a Romanian name, and therefore would not be Russian. Feel free to substitute any potato-based spirit from a former Eastern Bloc country of your choice.)

Also playing via my notebook PC is a piano work by Jancek that I downloaded from ersatz-sprocket. While lacking the touch of frost endemic to the Balanescu piece, it has a hushed, pondering quality that also makes for good early a.m. listening.

I'm kind of funny about my classical music. I like it either really new (20th Century minimalist works) or really old (Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque). Something about the austere quality of both (all?) styles really appeals to me aesthetically. The sound is stripped down, yet still manages to be complex -- I can follow a piece as a whole or dissect individual parts in my head.

As I mentioned previously, there are a number of 20th Century, Experimental, and similar works available for download at Epitonic.

I can vouch for the John Adams piece that they have available -- it's an excerpt from a work of his called Shaker Loops (I have a full recording of it on CD) that has a wonderful, ethereal, shimmering quality to it. There's also some stuff by Shostakovich (get out the Stoli for this), Stockhausen, John Cage, or, for something a bit more contemporary, Harold Budd.

Speaking of John Cage, there's a post over at Elegant Hack about his tale of translating a haiku from Japanese to English. Also worth a listen.

OK, since I mention Zen and Buddhism in my last post, how about some links?:

• About.com's Buddhism site is a good place to start if you don't know your Path from your Precepts


• BuddhaNet's eBook Library has a number of texts available for download in PDF format


• The Buddhist Studies WWW Virtual Library is a jump-off point to a ton of resources on just about every Buddhist school you can think of; the starting page of Zen resources breaks it down even further

Interestingly enough, two of my favourite books on writing draw heavily on the Zen thing:

• One Continuous Mistake: Four Noble Truths for Writers by Gail Sher -- like she says, "the only way to fail is not to write"


• Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within by Natalie Goldberg -- chock-full of anecdotes and very readable

Been reading a book called Throwing the Elephant: Zen and the Art of Managing Up, by Stanley Bing. It's an entertaining read on how to deal with people in the managerial ranks, particularly your boss.

This is one cynical book (Bing's preceding tome was What Would Machiavelli Do?). Funny, yes, but definitely cynical. Yet, I've seen enough of these corporate wastes of space (why else do I link to Dilbert on the sidebar) to know that there's a germ of truth in what he describes. Take this sample "Buddha Bullet", for instance:

Labor for its own sake is noxious. The elephant has gotten to the point where it does not need to engage in it anymore, but can simply engender it to others. That you are willing and able to do actual work gives you incredible power over a creature that by no means wishes to return to doing any.

One of the things I like about working for smaller companies in the IT field is that there are fewer places for these idiots to hide. You can't escape them completely, but at least there are fewer of them. (The spectre of prima donna techies looms large, however, but that's another story.) I have to credit my last place of employ for being relatively psychosis-free.

Anyway, Throwing the Elephant is a good way to kill a few hours or more. It's also pretty funny from a Zen Buddhist perspective, but familiarity with Zen isn't a requirement for reading it.

For some reason, I've stumbled across two separate galleries of ridiculous rock band photos:

• Rock and Roll Confidential's Daily Douchebag files -- this is frickin' hilarious (link via v-2.org)


• Theo's wunderbare Welt der Bandfotographie -- yeah, the text is in German, but how much translation do you really need? (link via Boing Boing)

(Addendum: Alternate link for RRC pix -- The Hall of Douchebags features thumbnails, so that you can revisit the funniest ones quickly and easily.)

You.

Yes, you there. You, zigzagging gormlessly back and forth along the Bloor St. sidewalk, Holt Renfrew bag dangling capriciously from a well-manicured hand.

Get the fuck out of my way.

You've obviously been able to expend enough brainpower to buy $300 "casual" shoes (or did you just marry the money, honey?), so picking one side of the sidewalk to stroll on shouldn't be that radical a concept for you. I'm carrying a bookbag heavy enough to kill a moose with, and I'm not afraid to use it.

Yes, that's better. Thank you.

Have a nice day.

Fling the Cow!

Too much fun. Thanks to The G Spot for the link.

(Kindly keep your smarmy little jokes to yourself.)

I've got you under my skin Where the rain can't get in But if the sweat pours out, just shout I'll try to swim and pull you out

Got one of my more melacholy CD mixes going on the stereo. Am somewhat temporally out of sorts, since I was actually up, dressed, and out of the hovel before noon today. Wonders never cease.

Thanks to InfoDesign, and sort of as a follow-up to the linkage I posted about depicting thoughts graphically, I've come across a site about diagrammatic reasoning.

I love being able to depict my thoughts pictorially (which is kind of funny, for a "writer"). When I discovered mind mapping a few years ago, it was like someone opened a door. I remember being in grade school, or high school, and the teachers would try and stress that there was only one was to record information "properly", that being linearly, with words, in proper sentences, or for the more radical, point form was acceptable.

Bullshit.

Even through university, I was still burdened to some degree with this rather outmoded form of studying. My academic record wasn't exactly outstanding -- of course there were a number of reasons for this, but I remember that with increasing amounts of information to process, the old grade-7 style paradigm of making study notes became increasingly inadequate.

When I went back to school part-time a few years ago, I relied on mind-mapping to summarize what I learned. It was great to be able to summarize an entire chapter on a single page (I used 9"x12" sketchbooks instead of regular notebooks), and being able to rely on not just words, but spatial organization as well to convey meaning. And colour. I love colour, which of course was another big no-no in the grade-7 paradigm (blue or black ink only, with red used to underline titles and headings).

It's been a long time since I was in grade school, but I would imagine that they're still teaching to same stiff, plodding, linear manner of "proper" studying. It strikes me as being even more outmoded now, in the age of hypertext and the web. Don't get me wrong -- linear rhetoric has its place, and I still think it's important to be able to string together a proper sentence, but let's not kid ourselves that it's the only way to do things.

(Also, check out Google's directory of mind mapping links.)

Following a comment I posted on thebiglist, I thought I'd propagate a link here:

Lamont's Rules of Jen -- "A constantly evolving set of guidelines for dealing with resplendent Jenitude on a day-to-day basis."

Read it. Learn it. Live it.

And while you're at it, check out the Jencyclopaedia. It's a few years old, but what the hell.

[Special bonus bit of trivia ('cuz it's all about me): My mom named me after actress Jennifer Jones, who played a Eurasian doctor in Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing.]

Awright, since rumbanik asked, a little explanation re: my previous post.

Played softball yesterday, the last game of the season. Our team finished dead last in the league, not winning a single game -- we're geeks, by and large, and hence not the most co-ordinated bunch. Nor the most enthusiastic. Anyhow, since it was our last game, someone brought a 24 of Molson's to the field.

Usually, I bring water with me for the game, but this time I didn't bother. And it was a lot warmer than expected. So, in lieu of other fluids, I wound up downing a couple brewskies during the course of the game. And I hadn't eaten beforehand. Not that it mattered -- I didn't play any worse than usual. Then afterwards, we went out for Greek food on the Danforth, and I went home, and all was well and good.

I kept having these dreams during the night that the epithelial cells on the roof of my mouth were growing out of control and taking over my mouth. And there was other weirdness that I no longer recall.

When I woke up, I was parched. My tongue was dry as the Sahara, and glued to the roof of my mouth. My eyelids were scraping over my eyeballs like cardboard over gravel. My head hurt -- not the worst headache I've ever had, but I was decidedly less than well.

Crawl to fridge. Remove Brita pitcher from fridge. Grab cup. Crawl back to bed. Drink some water. Doze. Drink more water. Doze. Repeat 'til after 5pm, when....

I got up, hit the shower, got dressed, and promptly made my way to a bar.

Sad, huh? But another GTA Blogger event was scheduled at Pauper's, and I said I'd show up, so I did. Not that the guest of honour showed up, but we won't hold that against him.

Lessons learned:

• The waitress at Pauper's gets annoyed if you bring in a cup of coffee from the place across the street, even if you buy food and beverage at Pauper's.


• Doing a Jaegermeister shot with no hands is tougher than it looks.


• Accordion guy can do a mean version of "Head Like a Hole" on the accordion. His Britney Spears cover ain't too shabby either.


• Doing an embarassing grimace for the camera will not deter Rannie in the least from posting it on his website (it ain't there yet, but it's just a matter of time).

A special public service announcement:

Molson Canadian is not an adequate substitute for water to replenish bodily fluids during sporting activities.

Back to your regularly scheduled blog.

Friend of mine e-mailed me this a while back, but the link resurfaced in a thread on Slashdot. The ArsTechnica Cookbook of "Bachelor Chow" is compilation of recipes by geek fans of ArsTechnica. As you might guess, the recipes are of varying degrees of culinary comptency.

I damn near bust a gut laughing while reading this recipe:

Popcorn Chicken

6-7 lb chicken,
1 cup melted butter,
1 cup stuffing,
1 cup uncooked popcorn.
Salt and pepper chicken to taste

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Brush chicken well with melted butter, salt and pepper.
Fill cavity with stuffing and popcorn.
Place in baking pan in oven.
Listen for popping sounds; when chicken's ass blows out the oven door
and flies across the room, chicken is done.

By PerrtyEyes

Or, as a follow-up to last week's beverage madness, how about:

Guiness Float

1 glass Guiness
1 scoop vanilla ice cream

By Mike (via email)

You're going to have to get me rrreeeaalllly drunk before I try that one.

There are some reasonably civilized recipes for things like lemon-pepper chicken, pad thai, tom yam soup (another Thai recipe), and some other stuff.

Linkage ahoy:

• Are you living in a computer simulation? -- "Are you just a brain in a jar?" gets updated, post-Matrix (thanks to v-2.org)


• Graphic organizers -- can't seem to write your ideas down? a picture is worth a thousand words (via Neat New Stuff on the Net)
  
  
  
  • companion piece: Your Company Strategy?in Pictures -- HBS Working Knowledge breaks it down for the pinstripe suit set
  
  


• Study suggests women have better memory for emotional experiences -- Quote: "Matrimonial lore says husbands never remember marital spats and wives never forget. A new study suggests a reason: women's brains are wired both to feel and to recall emotions more keenly than the brains of men." (Thanks, Bentley!)

Thanks to a former co-worker, I have learned a variation on a new gesture.

Start with your standard "loser" gesture -- index finger raised vertically, thumb pointing horizontally, raise hand to forehead.

Now extend your middle finger forward to create a third axis. You now have a "3D Loser", or, as I prefer, "Loser-cubed" (Loser³).

I'm feeling somewhat like a Loser³ at the moment. But it will pass.

Despite no prompting from me whatsoever, Jayme has granted me posting privileges on thebiglist, a move that she may live to regret.

View my inaugural list.

In the wake of Thursday's blog meetup, I must clarify.

circadian adj 1: of or relating to biological processes occurring at 24-hour intervals; "circadian rhythms" 2: (biology) exhibiting 24-hour periodicity

-- courtesy of Dictionary.com

And the word is pronounced "sir-cay-dee-un"; I've been mistakenly saying "kir-kay-dee-un" because that's the way my doctor says it. He introduced me to the term "circadian shift" when my sleep cycles were seriously out of whack and I wound up in a sleep lab to be tested for a sleep disorder. (Nothing definite turned up in the tests, BTW.) My doc's a smart guy, but English is his second language, so perhaps I shouldn't be taking my cues in pronunciation from him.

Paramecium Parachute has a post which tangentially discusses a visit to Detroit and the complete and utter decline the city has fallen into. Reminds me of a neat site I've been to called The Fabulous Ruins of Detroit.

It is stunning, the number of really nice buildings that have been abandonned and are in decay or have been demolished. There's really nothing in Canada that compares to this phenomenon, I don't think.

(And Greg, I tried to post a comment on your site, but the commenting function seems to be screwy.)

Via this blog, I've run across a list of One Hundred Albums You Should Remove from Your Collection Immediately. Quote:

The entries on this list fall roughly into three categories:

• Critically bullet-proof artifacts whose weighty presence on the shelf is complimented perfectly by their perpetual absence from the CD player. Critic-mandated vanity archives should be bundled up and spirited off to the used record store under the cover of night.


• Albums by new artists that have only their newness and the marketing efforts of music conglomerates to recommend them. Almost invariably, these recordings pale in comparison to those of the artists they imitate. Alternately, new albums by established artists that are slavishly hailed as the big comeback get high points with us. Like nature hates a vacuum, Jaguaro despises the Next Big Thing.


• Nostalgic favorites that maintain their place by tradition and neglect more than actual merit. These are the CDs people never get rid of because they may want to play them some time in the indefinite future (certainly not now).

Alas, most of my offending disks fall into category 3. Of the list of albums to junk, I own the following:

• Nirvana - Nevermind


• Miles Davis - Bitches Brew -- OK, I'll admit it, this is not an easy album to listen to; I bought it for just one track, "Spanish Key", and that's pretty much the only one I ever play


• Oasis - What's the Story, Morning Glory? -- isn't this one too easy a target for the list?; we all know that it was the fastest selling album in Britain when it came out, and then became the most common album in secondhand stores a few months later


• Chemical Brothers - Dig Your Own Hole -- you'll have to pry this one out of my cold dead fingers


• Dave Brubeck - Take Five -- ditto


• Cocteau Twins - Heaven or Las Vegas -- this was the last vinyl record that I ever bought new; if anything, I'd replace it with the CD


• Green Day - Dookie


• Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon; but what else will I listen to when I'm depressed? -- at least there's still....


• Sarah McLachlan - Fumbling Towards Ecstasy and Surfacing -- yep, I got 'em both; Fumbling... is an excellent record to wallow in if I'm feeling sorry for myself, so I guess Surfacing would be the one to go


• U2 - War -- have it on vinyl; was the last U2 album I liked before Achtung Baby came out; I haven't liked any U2 album after Achtung Baby, either


• The Beatles - Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band -- another one that I've got on vinyl; it's OK, but I agree that it's over-rated; I liked Revolver so much better

The list has some good candidates for the discard pile (Stereolab, Violent Femmes), but what I want to know is why nothing by Esquivel is on the list. I'm guilty in this regard -- I bought Space Age Bachelor Pad Music for its cool factor, but I only ended up liking two songs. At least I was never suckered into buying Combat Rock. So there.

I vow that it's goodbye to the old ways those stories were a good read they were dumb as well I could never be seen falling down on my knees crawling o no, talk about a sell

I rreeallly need to stay the hell out of CD stores.

Wandered into CD Replay in the Annex and found the first two albums by The Sundays in the used CD racks. As I've been on a streak of sentimentality lately, I figured I might as well go for it.

The Sundays feature moody, jangly instumentals much like the Cocteau Twins and vocals (courtesy of Harriet Wheeler) that manage to combine stunning melody and articulation with plaintive breathy girlishness -- think Natalie Imbruglia with a richer, fuller voice and a wider range.

Anyway, I burned a couple tracks from the two albums onto a CD with a bunch of Sarah McLachlan stuff, plus the song "Primitive Painters" by Felt (featuring Liz Fraser from the Cocteau Twins on guest vocals). Talk about a moody chick mix.

And yeah, I still haven't responded to any e-mail yet. I'm working on it.

(Goddamit. Blogger seems to be going awry again. At least this post seems to be preserved in the database.)

So I went to the first Blog Meetup thing last night, and I already have several e-mails to respond to from people I met. Things got off to a rough start, but the evening ended well.

A few lessons learned:

• The Madison is not the place to find people whom you've never met before


• When the group does finally get together, it is best not to congregate near other people who will barf right in the aisle you have to traverse to get to the washroom


• Contrary to what you might think, Bailey's and Coke is actually a rather tasty mix -- kinda like an ice cream float


• If you're going to torment your waiter by asking for strange drinks and photographing his bemused expression, it's a good idea to leave a generous tip

On the whole, was much fun. Am looking forward to the next gathering.

Addendum (20 July 2002): Rannie, Carla, and Kelly have pics on their respective sites.

Well, I decided to hunker down and do the list of 100 things about myself. However, I foolishly did it as a Microsoft Word document, and saving it as HTML introduced all sorts of crazy-ass stylesheet crap instead of the plain-vanilla markup for ordered lists that I wanted. I fucking hate Microsoft.

But without further ado (or formatting), here is my List of 100 Things:

1. I?m an INTP (but I used to be an INTJ)

2. The last time I actually cooked something (as opposed to opening a can, making a sandwich, microwaving, or adding water to something) was in November 1997

3. I eat alone in restaurants a lot

4. I was born and raised in Toronto

5. The longest period of time that I?ve ever been out of Toronto is 8 ½ months

6. I have visited nine other countries

7. I have visited five other provinces

8. One of those provinces is not British Columbia, although I have changed planes in Vancouver

9. I?ve been in love twice in my life

10. One of those times turned out to be a complete disaster

11. My geek code is GCM/GTW/GS/GSS d? s: a C++ UL P+ L+ |E W++ N@ |o K? w |O |M |V PS+ PE Y |PGP t+ 5 X+ |R |tv b++ DI+++ |D |G e++ h+ r% x+

12. My Chinese zodiac sign is the sheep

13. I wear glasses

14. I use to wear contact lenses, but I kept falling asleep with them in, or losing them, or whatever

15. I have over 2 GB of MP3s on my hard drive at the moment (more backed up on CD)

16. Favourite composer: J.S. Bach

17. I lost track of how many CDs I own after 200

18. I still have vinyl records

19. I still have a turntable to play vinyl records, and it?s actually hooked up to my stereo

20. If you took all the media (audio recordings, videos, print materials, computer files and software) and related playback devices out of my apartment, there wouldn?t be much left

21. At the rate this is going, I despair of ever coming up with 100 things to say about myself

22. I rarely bother wearing jewelry or makeup

23. I take vitamins

24. I have one sibling, a younger brother

25. Yes, it sucked being the oldest kid ? younger siblings get away with murder

26. Now that we?re not kids, my brother and I get along just fine

27. Wool makes me itch

28. I?m a brunette

29. I make blonde jokes

30. It?s very likely that I carry a recessive blonde gene

31. Carrying many recessive genes (hair colour, eye colour, etc.) means that I could theoretically have kids who look nothing like me

32. Not that I really want to have kids all that badly

33. I trip over things a lot

34. I really need to clean out my fridge

35. I?m right handed

36. I can write with my left hand ? backwards; it?s rough but legible if you hold it up to a mirror

37. I love coffee

38. I get headaches if I go without caffeine for too long

39. My favourite meal of the day is breakfast

40. I could (and sometimes do) eat ?breakfast? three times a day

41. I?m a night person

42. But I need sunshine

43. My internal clock can get pretty screwed up at times

44. I like British-style pubs and pub food

45. I like films with subtitles

46. I?m not as much of a snob about mainstream cinema as I used to be

47. I used to play piano and violin

48. I wish I could play jazz piano

49. A few summers ago, I thought about writing a book

50. Frankly, I don?t think I ever will write a book

51. I enjoy reading essays and short stories

52. I keep meaning to take drawing lessons

53. I used to paint

54. I like salmon better than tuna

55. I used to wear braces, and a headgear at night

56. I didn?t get my wisdom teeth removed until I was 29

57. I realize that I?ve gotten this far without mentioning my ethnic background

58. I?m not sure if it?s relevant

59. Yeah, what the hell: I?m half Swiss and half Filipino

60. Growing up Eurasian (or, as they say now, Hapa) in a predominantly white neighbourhood can warp perceptions of your own ethnicity

61. I didn?t really get a grip on it until I was 12; now I think it?s cool

62. I used to ski a lot

63. I?d like to try snowboarding

64. I prefer sports where you don?t sweat too much

65. I don?t have cable television

66. I?m now not quite two-thirds of the way through this list

67. I like airhockey, and the games at Playdium where you shoot stuff

68. I had a skateboard when I was 10

69. If I could just throw a couple pairs of underwear in a bag and get on a plane RIGHT NOW, I?d go to Cambodia and visit Angkor Wat

70. My passport expired two months ago

71. When I was little, I wanted to be a nurse (just like my mommy) or an artist

72. I did study life sciences at university; I didn?t like the other science students

73. Most of my friends at school were artsies

74. I?d love to learn to play the drums

75. I don?t have air conditioning in my apartment

76. In July, things can get pretty warm in here

77. I never thought I?d be a writer

78. I hesitate to call myself one now

79. I got really annoyed the one time I tried listening to CBC Radio 2?s morning show and they played Mahler

80. I listen to mainstream radio (Mix 99.9) on weekday mornings

81. I don?t get up in the morning all that often anymore

82. I don?t have a driver?s license

83. One of my ribs has drifted out of the place where it?s supposed to attach to my spinal column

84. My shoes are size 6

85. When I was 16, I wanted to be like Chrissie Hynde

86. I don?t play guitar

87. I can?t believe how long it?s taken me to make this bloody list

88. My favourite ice cream flavour is strawberry

89. My favourite ice cream flavour can change at any minute

90. As for what my biggest regret is, I?m not sure

91. Even if I could decide, I don?t know if I?d admit it

92. My index fingers are slightly crooked; same with my middle fingers

93. People tell me I have very tiny hands

94. When writing a list like this, it?s hard to be candid without being too revealing

95. I actually worry about revealing too much

96. I would be entertained if I had a pet llama

97. I like airplanes

98. I don?t answer my phone if I don?t recognize the number on call display

99. I get a lot of junk e-mail; I just delete it and move on

100. According to certain religious zealots, I?m going to hell

Been a while since I checked out some of the blogs that Blogger highlights on its home page. Today I decided to visit Girls Are Pretty.

Holy fuck.

This thing is raw, as in staring-at-the-maimed-flesh-on-your-forearm-that-you've-just-shredded-with-the-broken-end-of-a-Wild Turkey-bottle-for-something-to-do raw. Pretty Girl exhorts that you "(c)ome to this blog, every single day, and you will be told what to do." Her tonics for the sheep include:

"You're Shooting Heroin Into Your Labia All Wrong!! Day!"

"Ask Your Blind Date Whether He Or She Can Ever Hear The Sound Of Blood Screaming Through His Or Her Veins Day!"

"Feast Upon Your Regret Like It's The Lifelong Scourge Upon Your People, Responsible For The Death Of Your Extended Family, At Long Last Slain And Roasted Upon A Spit At The Foot Of A Simmering Volcano Day!"

"Confess To Your Officemate That Sometimes Even The Most Casual Physical Contact, Like A Handshake, Can Make You Wanna Set Yourself On Fire Day!"

Well, you can't argue with that.

Also check out an article that the blog links to called "The Office Birthday" (ya think it's the same author maybe?). It's so true.

We're early on here in that dark pool of night known as midnight to six, where the time is thick, liquid, and impenetrable, and you don't know if you should sink or swim.

I have a half-finished piece of writing sitting on my Jornada that's been there since Saturday. Normally, I don't pre-write before posting -- I may turn something over in my head a bit, but when I log into my account at Blogger and let my fingers fly over the keyboard, I rarely make use of the backspace key. But I had this idea, and I wanted to flesh it out a bit before lobbing it out there.

Oh, frig. I really want to go back and refine that middle sentence in the previous paragraph. I guess I do edit, but for the most part I compose a post in one sitting ("compose" -- oh that's rich) (shut up, shut up, goddam you), hit Publish, and that's it.

But I wonder if spontaneity is just taking the lazy way out. It takes discipline to refine your thoughts, hone your sentences, reduce your point to diamond-like precision (oooh, yuck, bad metaphor) (analogy?) (rhetoric fails me).

Then again, if I worry about polish, things might very well languish and never see the light of day. This latter point occured to me again as I read a little blurb titled "Release Early, Release Often".

So many books on writing tout the virtues of sitting your ass down and committing your words to paper, regardless of mood, inspiration, or lack thereof. Whether or not writing with a computer counts is another thing. Arguably, you lose a certain "purity", given the ease with which you can edit your thoughts via the keyboard.

Even as I sit here, so many half-formed blog bits flash through my head. Do I talk about the books on writing that I've read? Earlier today, I was jotting a little blurb in my head about the absurdity of the website for Hellmann's mayonnaise (I kid you not). Or I can talk about the embarassing mid-80s rock ballad I've got looping on WinAmp right now (group from Seattle, female lead singer and guitarist, song title rhymes with "A Clone"). Or I can continue boring you silly with this ridiculous exercise in metablogging.

Maybe I'll just shut up now. Sounds like a plan.

Am slowly re-organizing and transferring my links to Blogrolling. Stay tuned.

Children by the million sing for Alex Chilton when he comes 'round They sing "I'm in love. What's that song? I'm in love with that song."

I am in love with that song, which happens to be The Replacements' "Alex Chilton". Unfortunately, the only song I know by Alex Chilton himself is "September Gurls", which The Bangles covered on their Different Light album.

Anyway, not having heard that song in ages, I revelled in it again today during a radio show I'd never heard before. Little Steven's Underground Garage (warning: the site's really frigging slow) airs here in the GTA on the mighty Q107, Sundays between 11pm and 1am (Monday morning), and is a really smart romp through four decades worth of garage rock (emphasis on the 60s and 70s though). Despite featuring so many oldies, it just seemed so sharp, fresh, and vibrant, like a cool breeze on a muggy summer's night.

The refreshment was particularly welcome after we sat listening through an hour-long Pink Floyd live set ca. 1975, while being caught in a traffic jam on Highway 400. Now there was a trip. If you want to experience time/space dilation without the benefit of halucinogens or interstellar travel, try sitting in a motionless vehicle on a highway while moody prog-rock featuring endless guitar and keyboard solos plays on your radio.

But I digress. Anyway, check the website to see if the Underground Garage plays on a radio station near you (it's syndicated to various stations across North America), and give it a listen.

Am up at the parents' place in Port Severn. Drove up late last night. Was a nice night -- no heat, no smog, no garbage pile-up, just stars, trees, water, and.... frogs.

I had my bedroom window open, and it was like a goddam frog singles-bar was happening out there. Every sort or ribbiting-croaking-peeping-honking(?) noise you could imagine a frog making was sounding and sounding and sounding until the early early hours, when the frogs shut up.... and the birds started singing.

Ya gotta love nature. At least it still beats the hell out of hearing trucks, motorcycles, and car alarms going off.

The August issue of New Architect magazine is online. I glanced at the guest editorial by Alan Cooper, but it's just another piece about the importance of putting a good design together before coding. I would have thought that's self-evident by now, but I keep seeing the point being made over and over and over again in various software development journals. Are coders really that stubborn? The debate will have to take place another time.

There's also an article about building David Lynch's website which is vaguely interesting. Seems that DavidLynch.com is available only via a subscription model. I wonder how they're doing. Some of the content sounds neat, but the entire bloody site is done in Flash (there's also a lot of QuickTime content), and I just haven't got that kind of patience when I only have dial-up access to the web. Oh, well.

Went out and sat on the patio at the Second Cup at Bloor and Bathurst for a while. Caffeine and sunshine are good things. Very good things. Had a notebook with me, plus my book on XHTML, so I got a bit of writing and a bit of reading done. Funny thing happened, though. Even I had a pen and paper sitting right there in front of me, at one point I was seized with the urge to go home and write in my blog. Wierd, huh?

So there I was, out on the patio in my geeky best -- hair unkempt 'cuz I couldn't be bothered to put any gel or mousse in it, sandals, khakis, and an untucked baggy T-shirt that my parents brought for me as a souvenir from their visit to South Dakota. It has a picture of a buffalo on it. Yeah, I was stylin'.

Lo and behold, some cute guy at the table next to me asks to borrow my pen. I was using my fountain pen at the time, so I dug into my bag for a ballpoint to lend. He used it (or rather his friend did) and handed it back to me with thanks, remarking that it was a nice pen. I just grinned and remarked: "It's a space pen!" (ie. one of those fancy astronaut pens that can write upside down).

God, I'm such a dork.

Anyhow, I was able to salvage my ego somewhat by inwardly mocking the pair of Ally McBeal wannabe's at the table on the other side of me. These two specimens (both blonde) were decked out in little shorts and tank-tops and both were poring through big honkin' binders from the Law Society of Upper Canada (LSUC, or "L-Suck", as a friend of mine who works for the federal court calls them). When not twittering noisily about how oh-so-hard they had to study for their Bar Admissions in three months time, they indulged in chatter about the movie Titanic (one of them saw it four times, the other couldn't be bothered because, like, she "knew how it would end") and gabbed on their cell phones. Which just goes to show you that possessing a law degree and the personality of a toaster oven are not mutually exclusive.

Actually, I like my toaster oven. It heats up Pop Tarts and waffles for me, and doesn't kvetch about having the right shade of polish for its toenails.

Whatever. Guess I filled my bitchy quota for the day. Should go do laundry, so that I can wear clothing that doesn't have pictures of buffalo on it.

Slashdot has a discussion going titled "Electronic Music 101" which is chock-full of 'dotter recommendations to the electronica newbie.

I'll admit that I'm a little surprised that so many of them are trance fans and there were relatively few recommendations for gabber/hardcore. Then again, they probably didn't want to frighten the newbie. Then again (again), maybe it's 'cuz listening to trance is more conducive to long coding sessions, thanks to its gentle propulsive quality, than listening to gabber, which tends to just bash you over the head repeatedly. Anyway, the discussion's worth a scan if you want to pick up a few new coordinates where you can feed your hunger for electronic music.

Damn, want to write more, but my brain is getting fuzzy. Must go ingest caffeine and other daily recommended breakfast chemicals.

As you turn to leave Never looking back Will you think of me? Will you ever, could it ever stop?

Blogger seems to be going awry right now, so I can't actually publish any new ramblings (or my 4am blurbage on modafinil) for all to see, but at least I seem to be able to save my posts to the database.

Wandered into She Said Boom down at College and Bathurst and picked up a used Japan compilation called Souvenir From Japan. (Yes, I'm feeling nostalgic.) It's got the same track listing as my old beat-up vinyl copy of Assemblage, although the songs are in a different order. My one beef: they've included a really godawful wussed out mix of "Life in Tokyo" instead of the one I know and love. Fortunately, my favourite song, "Quiet Life" remains unmolested and is sounding real good, booming out from my stereo right now.

Also scored a fun little volume in Pages titled Hello Midnight: An Insomniac's Literary Bedside Companion. It's an eclectic mix of articles, song lyrics, novel excerpts, sleep facts and trivia, and some comic relief thrown in for good measure. Not bad for $5.99 on the clearance rack.

Got a link from v-2.org to an article about modafinil. Quote:

In trials on healthy people like Army helicopter pilots, modafinil has allowed humans to stay up safely for almost two days while remaining practically as focused, alert, and capable of dealing with complex problems as the well-rested. Then, after a good eight hours' sleep, they can get up and do it again -- for another 40 hours, before finally catching up on their sleep.

Originally aimed at narcoleptics, who fall asleep frequently and uncontrollably, modafinil works without the jitter, buzz, euphoria, crash, addictive characteristics or potential for paranoid delusion of stimulants like amphetamines or cocaine or even caffeine, researchers say. As with an increasing number of the so-called superhuman, posthuman or trans-human drugs or genetic manipulations rapidly entering our lives, modafinil thus calls into question some fundamental underpinnings of hundreds of thousands of years of thought regarding what are normal human capabilities.

The article goes on to discuss modafinil's potential to creep into mainstream use by your average joe who doesn't so much demonstrate a clinical need for such a drug, but just wants the extra boost. Better living through chemistry.

Hello? Anyone remember Listening to Prozac? Peter D. Kramer's 1993 volume touted "cosmetic psychopharmacology" -- that all sorts of enhancements to one's personality could be achieved through ingesting Prozac or other SSRIs, even if one wasn't depressed to begin with. (Yeah, I could've link provided links re: Prozac and SSRIs but I don't know any good, succinct resources off-hand. I assume you can work Google as well as I can.)

The parallels with modafinil just jump up and scream. Initially Prozac was touted as a wonder drug that had laser-like precision on afflicted parts of the brain, with no nasty side effects. Similar claims being made here. Of course, it turns out Prozac wasn't all as neat and tidy as everyone thought (side effects, reduced efficacy with extended usage, etc.). The people who developed modafinil admit they don't even know the exact mechanism by which it works. So who the hell knows what could happen to your brain with long term exposure to this stuff.

What the hell is my point here, anyway? I don't even remember anymore. Something along these lines: while I'm not anti-medication (better living through chemistry!), nothing comes without a price.

Hmm. Sleep. Maybe I should try it sometime.

Back in tha' day when I was strictly doing tech writing (which really isn't all that long ago, and I'd had a whole other "career" before even getting into IT, but I digress), it was reasonably easy to explain to people (eg. my parents) what the hell I did for a living. I wrote user manuals and designed online help for software. Anyone who had used a computer could readily grasp what that meant.

But, having moved more into information architecture (and I knew I wanted to do IA-type things before I had ever heard of IA), it's much tougher to explain what I do. And it certainly doesn't help that IA practitioners themselves can't agree on what IA is.

There's now a page up on IAwiki titled "Defining the Damn Thing". There are plenty of Venn diagrams depicting the overlapping disciplines that make of IA, and links to lots of other terms that get bandied about, like interaction design, information design, and experience design.

Hmmm... Notice the word "design" popping up an awful lot in that last sentence? Me, too. Funnily enough, Peter Merholz has an article out with his own "Thoughts on Design with a Capital D", which throws in a few more Venn diagrams for good measure.

[For the record (if anyone cares), my own IA style tends more towards the content-oriented, information design end of the spectrum (not surprising, for a tech writer), but I've done some interaction design work as well.]

Damn. Dozed off for an hour or so yesterday evening, then was awake 'til 5.30 this morning. Getting out of bed at noon is starting to look like an accomplishment.

Ran across this via Cogito, Ergo Sumana:

Overqualified job seekers understate their qualifications

"...Many former tech workers who climbed the corporate ladder during the Internet gold rush are finding that playing up their career achievements can hurt their chances of finding work. Some job seekers have resorted to underselling themselves -- downplaying some of their skills and experience -- in order to gain employment."

Damn, I forgot -- I'm supposed to be looking for a job, aren't I?

Am playing softball this evening, but thanks to the ongoing city workers strike here in T.O., the game is being played in a park just outside city limits. By the way, have I mentioned that our mayor is an idiot? I'm surprised that he hasn't called in the army yet to deal with our garbage problem.

I have a headache. QFD.

I wound up paying another visit to the Deep House Archives last night and downloaded the set titled "Meltin' Pot". (Actually, I'm four tracks short of the full set 'cuz my download manager crashed, but that's another story.) The set is billed as "seventies jazz-funk, soul-jazz & funky fusion" and it is way cool -- a smooth, sexy mix perfect for kicking back on the patio with a pitcher of sangria while the sun sets. Highly recommended.

The scene: a nice sunny firth, somewhere in Scotland. Several Scottish otters frolic amongst the rocks and kelp. Enter two big Canadian otters.

Bob: G'day! How's it going, eh?
Doug: So, do you guys like herring? It's like, beauty, eh?

Archie: Ach! Wot's this? I canna unnerstan' a word of it!
Hamish: It's not Scottish!
Archie: If it's not Scottish, it's crap!
Hamish: Time for a beating, then!

Several grumpy little Scottish otters surround the Canucks. Bob and Doug are held with their paws pinned behind their backs while the Scots proceed to pummel the crap out of them.

Hamish: Right, laddies! Let's go watch some football on the telly!

Scottish otters exit, leaving the Canadians dazed and bleeding on the rocks.

For background information, please refer to this article. Thanks to Post-Atomic for the link.

Oh. My. God. Why can't we have anything like this in Toronto?

Punk Rock Aerobics -- "The work out that rocks out. No more sucky classes full of braindead bimbos in spandex thongs. PRA is for fun people with discerning taste. An hour and a half cardio and strengthening class that will have you pogoing and skanking your butt off!"

I'd sooner beat myself over the head with a wrench than join Bally's, but a class like this would be so cool. Thanks to BoingBoing for the link.

Against my better judgement, I wandered into Sam the Record Man today and found myself in the classical music section. Was immediately seized by the most amazing vocal sound -- it wasn't chant and it wasn't choral work, but somewhere in between. Turned out to be a work by Christobal de Morales, a polyphony written in the sixteenth century.

I wish I could describe the sensation of standing there in Sam's while this pure crystalline sound came over me, bathed me in a light that only I could see. The only word I can use is ekstasis, the Greek root of the English word 'ecstacy' which means "to stand outside oneself". Of course I had to buy the CD.

The last time I saw fit to apply the word ekstasis to a piece of music I heard was when I listened to something by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. I'm deeply mistrustful of organized religion, but I can't help but be astounded by the beauty and purity of certain musical offerings to the gods.

(Addendum: For some reason, the link to Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan's official homepage doesn't seem to be working. You can alway try Google's NFAK directory. And here's a page about the ghazal and the qawwali.)

Well, I went back to bed and didn't get up again 'til after 2. If this were in December, I'd have gone days by now without seeing sunlight. Yikes.

Via The Truth Laid Bear, I've come across Bibendum. One of today's items involves Mrki, a young bear living near a village somewhere in Bosnia. Seems that Mrki has been all by his lonesome since his mother was killed by hunters. The villagers feed him and "according to locals he is so tame that you can sit down and enjoy a beer with him without fear that he will turn aggressive".

The thing is that Mrki has developed a taste for the sudsy beverage himself, to the point where he's been chugging about 20 cans a day (the locals would leave the occasional partly finished can behind), getting drunk, and partaking in some particularly raucous "singing". The villagers are trying to wean him off the stuff by giving him de-alcoholized beer.

Poor little orphan bear. Almost sounds like a Disney movie. I can see it now -- Bambi II: Rehab.

Y'know how I was saying that I hoped noone was trying to phone while I was downloading stuff last night? Well, my mother was, and did so again bright and early at 9.30 this morning. After I'd been up 'til nearly 5. Ugh.

So, now I'm awake (sort of), and figure this is just as good a time as any to mention a site I came across recently called explodingdog. Sam takes titles, phrases, or whatever verbiage you care to send him and draws pictures about them. Some pics are delightfully whimsical, others surprisingly poignant. Worth a look.

And I'd be negligent if I didn't give a shout-out to rumbanik (yo!), who has his own page of doodles. My fave pic is the workplace still life.

In one of my ongoing bouts of MP3 gluttony, I wound up visiting the Deep House Archives. Am listening to a bunch of tracks comprising "The Tech Heritage", a deep/tech house mix. Of course, it took me 5 1/2 hours to download the set (is enough to fill an entire audio CD), but fortunately I had Wednesday night television (The West Wing -- a recent discovery for me, as well as Law & Order) to distract me while my little 56K modem did its thing. Hopefully nobody wanted to talk to me on the phone in the meantime.

Also took the time to finish a Webword article that I've had sitting on my PDA for eons titled "Some Thoughts on Extranets". Was a nice overview of some of the business and design considerations you need to take into account when you're going to build an extranet.

Meant to mention this a while back, but UIweb has compiled a listing of the "best" (ie. most useful) posts from the CHI-WEB and SIG-IA mailing lists. I used to subscribe to the SIG-IA mailing list, but I did so at the office and didn't transfer my subscription when I lost my job.

As it is, I'm subscribed to a few mailing lists at home, including TECHWR-L and a couple of the SIG lists from Digital Eve Toronto, but I hardly ever read them any more. They can be extremely time consuming to plow through, especially TECHWR-L, and sometimes go off on really annoying, bitchy flamefests or general pointless whingeing. Granted, they often yield really useful nuggets of information, but I find it's just easier to search the archives when I need to find info on something specific.

There was a brief article on the life cycle of mailing lists (written by a TECHWR-Ler, I understand) that rings every bit as true now as it did back in '96.

(For the record, I was on the net back in '96, running the Quarterdeck Mosaic browser on a 486SX with 4 MB of RAM, connecting with a 14kbps modem.) ("...and before that we used carrier pigeons, and we didn't even have string to tie the messages to their legs, by god, and...")

despite all my rage i'm still just a rat in the cage

Via Makovision I came across a brief newspaper article about Jakob Nielsen. The article was just a basic intro/overview piece, but had one quote from Mr. Nielsen that caught my eye:

"We have a concept of conditioning rats by giving them a lever to press for food. The best way to keep the rat pressing the lever is if you randomly reward it.

"The web is exactly like this. Every now and then you come across great stuff, and you think, 'If I only click once more I might find something.' So you keep going longer than you should."

Over at Memoware, the new site design is up and running. Looks good. Understandably, there haven't been many additions to their e-book collection of late, but hopefully that'll pick up again.

MemeMachineGo! has a list of tips on how to fail at writing. It's so true, especially item #6.

"Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely." -- Edward Tufte

Has anyone else been following Click to Add Title? Seven rounds of duelling PowerPoint presentations. Round two, titled "Horror Show" ran last week, and it lived up to its name. Twenty fun-filled slides (ten from each contestant) of the most horrific transitional, textual, sound, and animation effects ever dished up by the Microsoft corporation. Not to mention bad clipart, cheezy pie charts and tacky graphs. It was truly awe-inspiring in its mastery of the software's most abused features.

Round one was good for a chuckle as well. I'm not too familiar with the "content wizards" -- boilerplate presentations on various themes (eg. "Motivating a Team", "Conduct a Creative Thinking Session") that allow even the most vapid corporate drones to put together a somewhat coherent piece. If anyone ever tried to "motivate" me with a bunch of lame-ass slides, I'd insert their projector somewhere on/in their person where the sun doesn't shine.

Metafilter had a nice discussion on the evils of PowerPoint which included some primo linkage to related articles of interest.

Over at Rare 1980's MP3 of the Week, Scott has posted excerpts from three songs that he can't identify. I don't know what they are either, but they sound rrreeeaalllly familiar. The first track reminds me of the Cabaret Voltaire song "Don't Argue", but I don't think it's the same vocalist. And I can't help but think that the third track was done by a Canadian group. Can you figure it out?

Went to see Porn Star: The Legend of Ron Jeremy. It was an amusing and largely sympathetic depiction of some guy who, for all practical purposes, should be paying you to see him naked (he's short, fat, and hairy) rather than the other way around. Seems like the only things missing from ol' Ron's life are acceptance by mainstream Hollywood and a meaningful relationship. Well, boo-fucking-hoo. I didn't dislike the guy, but I sure as hell didn't feel sorry for him either. But still, it was a reasonably entertaining film.

Noise Between Stations recommends an article titled "Metadata Principles and Practicalities" as a good introduction/overview to the topic. I've added it to my reading pile.

(Yes, I know it was a bit of jump going from writing about a porn star to mentioning a library journal article on metadata. I trust you can keep up.)

I've started plowing through the book on XHTML that I was rambling about before. So far it's been a pretty easy read, since it revisits 'yer basic set of HTML elements and highlights what's changed in XHTML. The part where I'm woefully deficient is in use of CSS2, but that's still a few chapters away.

And it's occured to me how screamingly out of date my XML skills are. It's been over two years since I've worked with it. Back in tha' day, we used a DTD when authoring and to validate the files. Now everybody's using XML Schemas instead. And I haven't got a freaking clue how RDFs work.

QFD.