END

That's right: another quarter is coming to a dramatic close, another year soon to follow it. It's been a very busy fall for me even though, erm, on paper I've accomplished rather little. But I think I'm still on target to get a few Great Things off my list this academic year, so that's good.

I also went through a bit of a fallow zone there in terms of work ethic, and I'm beginning to feel the old manic energy coursing through the hamster wheel. I didn't get much time off last summer and it turns out that 19 years of formal education have conditioned me to need that.

But not to worry. Soon, once again, I will be invincible.

ha HA!

DELETE
FROM `mt_comment`
WHERE comment_visible = 0

What does this mean? It means death to spammers, bots, and the shadowy evil-doers of the intertubes. It means "get rid of all my unpublished comment spam." It means freedom.

After some tinkering, I finally figured out the SQL command that would get rid of all the bad comments that have been cluttering up the back-end of this blog for years. This is what happened, and how long it took:

Deleted rows: 29244 (Query took 27.2919 sec)

I love/hate computers.

Breaking up (with Tivo) is hard to do

What have I been doing this time? Recording television.

Tivo and I just had a very difficult conversation. Our box is old and doesn't record HD content. Plus it's an expensive monthly subscription. On the other hand, it's much more intelligently designed than the cable box provided by the Evil Empire Comcast people.

I really feel for Tivo as the underdogs of the cable world, and they make great stuff, and they seem to be struggling (is it ever a good thing when the company's CFO leaves ten months after he was hired?). That was reflected in my conversation with them today--I've never spoken to a company so desperate to keep my business (it reminded me of the most wild-eyed rug merchants you meet in bazaars in Asia). First they offered to cut our rates in half. Then they gave us two free months to think about things. In the end, I took the two free months because with the much cheaper rate, Tivo's almost worth it again. If you're willing to shell out huge sums for a fancy new box.

So now we're in a difficult relationship limbo. Tivo's not even plugged in downstairs, but we haven't quite said our goodbyes yet either. AWKWARD.

What have I been doing instead of blogging?

Well, blogging elsewhere, for one thing. And reading! Isn't that the point of grad school?

I've started an account on LibraryThing, a simple but somewhat addictive book-cataloging service. They really try to lure you into the stygian depths of bibliomania--they literally sell barcode scanners to speed up your cataloging process. I'm not there yet, but I have been adding things to my library. And they make widgets--I'm adding one to the sidebar. Whee!

Home Tech: The Joy of Wires

The surround sound is up. There were some personal sacrifices made in terms of time, self-respect, career, marriage, aesthetics, storage, personal relationships and spatial relationships. But it's working now. We live in a 5.1 digital audio world, thanks to my new codependent friends from Sony and Yamaha.

Havoc and Devastation

You may not have known it to look at the site, but things have been in total chaos here for the past couple of weeks. My hosting providers did something terrible to their servers and they've been working to restore things. I am hoping that everything is back to normal--there were still a few errors with the database that stores all of my Movable Type stuff.

So hopefully we're all back to normal now. As usual, I have nothing clever to say, which is a good sign that we're back on familiar ground.

Morning drama

I was engrossed in writing and by the time I heard the garbage truck it was already at our neighbors'. At first I lost heart, but then I was upstairs and looking outside I could still see the truck further down the street. I raced to change into some shorts and ran downstairs to grab the most offensive-smelling bin. By that time the truck was almost at the end of our block. As I ran down the street with the garbage bin over my shoulder I asked some contractors who were observing "think I'll make it?" Obligingly they whistled and hollered to get the garbage crew's attention while I closed the distance.

The garbageman gave me a look to match my disheveled condition but condescended to take my proffered heap of waste. In conversation it emerged that another crew comes by on Tuesdays to the apartment complex and does collect from inside the garages, as long as the doors are open. but that certainly didn't happen this Tuesday. Another mystery within the Passion of renting.

terminal anomie

It's been setting in lately. I tried to take some time off this summer. I planned nothing, sat around the house, fiddled with lost electronic causes, and generally twiddled my way through several uninterrupted, event-free days.

I nearly went mad.

I had to start moving us out of our old apartment early, and the inactivity drove me to the insanity of an elaborate plan to move without buying more boxes, using only the resources we already had. These were: four or five office document boxes; several cubic feet of plastic bags under the sink; one VW Golf. In small, maniacal increments, I shuttled our possessions the ten minutes to our new place. It was the origami of moves, all in an effort to get the worst over with while Anna was at work.

Of course, all of this effort made no real difference. We still spent the bulk of our long weekend packing and unpacking (remember, no boxes!), driving back and forth, and cleaning up the old place. But it did force us to unpack as we went instead of living with boxes for several weeks, as we might have done otherwise.

Now that the moving is done, I am back to the blank wall of terminal anomie. I can't quite bring myself to start studying, yet I can't quite seem to relax either. I stare at screens all day, or engage in small, meaningless projects that I try to pile up like so many crumpled balls of paper.

To give you a sense of how serious this is, I've almost cleared through my pile of unread New Yorkers . I've even started reading a mammoth history, Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945, that is surely the wrong break to take before I delve into the thousands of pages of literature that I will need to review before the fall. But at least now "quiet reading time" actually relaxes me.

O Hawaii

Tomorrow morning Anna and I are departing for a few well-deserved days in the sunny islands. It was a really hectic end to the quarter, and we're both looking forward to some laptop-free time. Have a great week, all!

Going Web 2.0

Not that I'm entirely sure what Web 2.0 means, but it definitely involves "tag clouds" like the one at the top of this page (courtesy of Dan Wolfgang). I'm going to experiment with a plug-in that changes the "categories" architecture of Movable Type to allow for easier on-the-fly category generation, and posts with multiple category tags. I'd like to get more specific in my categories, especially in posts where I talk about particular media forms or Big Topics that might be interesting outside of the stream-of-blog consciousness.

Also, I have added squiggly lines. As you can see...I made them myself.

Free Delwin!

And he seemed like such a nice young man.

A new sheriff in town

I've upgraded to Movable Type 3.2. This will probably change how comments work, but I'm not sure exactly how. I'd like to avoid making people sign up for yet another user name and password, but using another system could get annoying. In the meanwhile, I think comments will be "moderated" (by me), so apologies if you feel put upon.

Stay tuned.

Netflixonomics

We recently hit our one year anniversary with Netflix. We took Netflix out for a nice dinner, there was candlelight, an exchange of gifts, and vows of continued postal embrace. Well, no, none of that happened. But I did get a list of all the movies we've rented in the past year. And, because I'm a pathetic nerd, I put it into Excel and crunched some numbers on our rental activities. Here are some highlights:

Average rentals / month: 7.58
Average cost / rental: $2.57

I reveal my tragic geekdom to you in this open fashion because I also recently received news of a pending class action settlement between Netflix and an irate Mr. Chavez. The suit (for which Netflix will deny any wrongdoing), revolves around the fact that Netflix allegedly promises one-day turnaround on movies. However, subscribers have documented a "throttling" procedure the company will use if you start returning movies too quickly. Think of it as the disapproving stare the matron with the tongs gives you on your fifth trip back to the all-you-can-eat salad bar. Only postal.

But, since all we're talking about is a hard-to-establish, perhaps-not-illegal-anyway squeakiness to the great Netflix gear-shaft, I'm not surprised that the proposed settlement is basically one month of extra DVDs from Netflix.

But I think the real story is Netflix's near-seamless integration with the postal service. I find it fascinating that the company can rely so completely on the federal mail for its business. Of course, the marriage is not without its problems, but every time I send one of those little red envelopes off, I am amazed anew.

100% Real Cheese

That is what it says on the frozen pizza I have in the oven right now, and I think it's as good a motto as any.

I mean, what are they thinking? Is it really wise to call attention to the question of cheese content like that? They could have mentioned their "resplendent mozzarella" or "farm-fresh monterey jack" or "sensuous, life-altering gouda." But no. They had to go out there and assert something we already assumed was true.

To add injury to insult, the pizza comes with a mysterious external ring of tinfoil that you're supposed to put on top in the oven, as if to prevent it from being affected by alien pizza-control signals. Allegedly, this prevents the crust from "over-browning." Whatever. It'd better taste good...after its 65 MINUTES OF BAKING. I'll just sit here and eat some of my desk accessories while I wait.

"It's not delivery: It's an hour of fist-gnawing anguish!"

Search zen

These are the things people have searched for on this site so far in September. Cheerleaders? Who are these people, and just what kind of site do they think this is?

Top 14 of 14 Total Search Strings

Rank | times searched | % of searches | search string

1 	3 	16.67% 	cafe table

2 	2 	11.11% 	aitchison college

3 	2 	11.11% 	photo album web page generator

4 	1 	5.56% 	aitchison college lahore

5 	1 	5.56% 	black cafe table

6 	1 	5.56% 	charticle

7 	1 	5.56% 	ed finn

8 	1 	5.56% 	ed finn stanford

9 	1 	5.56% 	get me up

10 	1 	5.56% 	movie blogs

11 	1 	5.56% 	parlay

12 	1 	5.56% 	she%27s sleeping

13 	1 	5.56% 	tiberius' minnows

14 	1 	5.56% 	words that say cheerleader

The Promised Land

Here at last! We are here at last. After two days of piloting the new Golf through fiery desert rest areas and the depths of Los Angeles, we have arrived in the land of milk and honey: sweet, sweet grad school. The air is cool, the grass is greener, and our student housing comes furnished. Oh Palo Alto, unblemished bride of quiet five-lane suburbia!

The internet is fast here in California, within the throbbing core of Silicon Valley, on the campus where much of our modern telecommunications infrastructure was invented. Shocking.

Mirabile dictu, I'll have a month to wallow in my new state before school starts, but Anna is not so lucky. Orientation starts tomorrow, and soon it will begin with the backpacks and the huge books and the people taking notes on their laptops and the end-of-semester exams that count for 100% of the grade. I will bake her cookies. Or something. Network her printer. Whatever.

I've strayed off topic. Topic: we're here.

retro-chic

Anna's sister is just out of high school, and sometimes she makes us feel very old. Last night we were discussing 90's bands (prompted by the disconcerting arrival of the Backstreet Boys on Anna's pod), and Mary told us it was ok to listen to the Spice Girls now, since it was all so long ago and because they broke up. "It would be retro-chic--you know, you could listen to them ironically."

But we can't see, because we are so old we heard them the first time around. The irony has rusted into age and the dull patina of the formerly popular.

It's weird to be at the stage where the music of our childhood is categorized in its own ten-year greatest hit anthologies. I remember thinking, as a young strip of a lad, that it would be impossible for the creepy people on those late-night commercials to categorize the music of my generation as neatly as they did for the 1970s and 1980s. I was wrong about a lot of things back then.

Somehow, the passing of the years, which seems so mundane on a personal level, is rendered mysterious through the prism of cultural memory. Things that were normal to us a decade ago begin to seem as dated and obvious as big lapels and penny loafers when we think back to them through others' eyes. I'm at the age now where there's a whole generation of young adults who haven't seen the defining films of my generation, who don't remember the first Gulf War or the Berlin Wall coming down, and who never tasted that weird Pepsi crystal drink or whatever that stuff was.

No. They have their opinions, and they have found our years bemusing and generally unimportant. They'd rather listen to something called Death Cab for Cutie (which, ok, apparently did put out an album in 1998--whatever). I guess my point is, how do you keep track of the past as it sprawls out behind you? In another few decades, all but an infinitesimal portion of the 1990's will be lost and forgotten, and our personal connections to that cosmically unremarkable set of years will become even more atomized. It's weird to think of growing up not just as a process of personal change, but of losing shared spaces and memories that are no longer universal. Soon I'll be in that dark land beyond even the saving graces of retro-chic.

Wow

I'm back in the homeland. I'm writing this on my new laptop (FINALLY). I am overwhelmed. I'm sitting in the kitchen, nerding wirelessly, and being fed delicious cold sugar-snap peas (or at least, now I think that's what a sugar-snap pea should taste like).

Life is good.

More later.

Le Canada et La Turquie

Anna and I just got back from four lovely days in Montreal. It was wonderful, relaxing, down-home bacon-filled Canadian fun. The weather was great, the beer was cheap, and it only takes 53 minutes to fly there. Just don't go during the 10 month winter.

Soon I'll be heading to Turkey for a few days of sun, fun, and lots of unweildy summer reading. Then, Tucson! Then, the West!

Anyway, all of the travelling is represented in my digital world as well, where I am a vagabond until I get a new computer this fall. I still have my faithful Dell laptop, but the screen is so screwed up it's basically useless. Which is to say, my blogging is not going to be all it might be in the next month or so. But I'll try.

a scene from the screenplay

ED strolls into the kitchen examining a hairy, rock-speckled object he has found under the couch

ED
It's not alive...

ANNA
Where did you find it?

ED
Under the carpet.

ED pauses, thoughtfully, examining the baroque globule of filth resting on the tip of his finger.

ED
You know, this is the most interesting thing
I've seen all day. And we spent two hours
at the Museum of Modern Art.

car(s)hopping

No self-respecting Californian would attend school without a car, and so Anna and I are going out to look at vehicles today. We've divvied up the roles to create maximum confusion among sales reps (thus securing greater bargains for a car that definitely won't be purchased today). I will be the stern male figure, nodding sagely in discussions of torque and wheel-base and saying things like "yep." I will also be there to try and sit in the car. Cars I can't fit into won't really work for us, you see. And it's not just any car that....well, you get my point.

Anna will be the one making all of the decisions and buying the car.

My idea of a major purchase is getting a new watch, which is probably good, considering what a gut-wrenching decision it will be for me. So far, all I have to say about my latest consumer quest is--why can't they explain what all the little dials on the "multifunction" watches do? Do they not do anything? Are they so silly it would be embarrassing to actually state their purpose? I mean, some of them are little dials numbered 1-12 or 1-24. Could it really be another hour indicator for those who just can't see the big picture of regular the hour hand? What is it with these people, anyway? Why do the only decent-looking classy watches cost thousands of dollars? Are labor relations with the Swiss Designers' Gnome Union so bad?

Anyway. As you can see, the intricacies of time-piece selection are plenty complicated for me. I'm glad I'm just the muscle in Anna's shopping operation.

the young and the jobless

Today, Anna and I quit our jobs. No, we aren't staging our own little marxist revolution, except maybe a little bit. You see, we're both going to grad school, and this is our last day pulling in a salary before we both pack up and move to Academia. It's sort of a shocking thought, and the weather is appropriately portentous, ushering us off to the land of dreams with gray skies and cold rain.

The whole jobless thing is not new for me. Since graduating from college, I've held a variety of positions, and I spent plenty of time looking for each of them. I know how exhausting it can be to spend a whole day doing nothing, how productivity and will-power get sapped to the point that sending out a single resume and cover letter seems like a pinnacle achievement. I know how soul-crushing it can be to spend the whole day lounging around in your underwear eating bonbons. Even now, I shudder at the agony we are about to undergo.

Sure, I know I can handle the searing pain of idleness. But I'm going to have to help Anna through this difficult period of not spelunking the cubicles every day. It will be difficult for her not to claw her way onto the subway, swim through the miasmic subterranean subway stank, and elbow her way past the indigent, the overweight, the musically inclined, the furtively pet-bearing, the sweaty and the heavily armed on her way to the turnstile. But, with my expert counseling and the clinical application of late-morning buttered scones, she will come to acknowledge, and even to accept, this wrenching loss.

I will repeat my mantra to her until she accepts it like a new age pamphlet on 42nd St: You've got to work at joblessness to really make it worthwhile.

I think the most difficult part of leaving work, for us, is the fear of free time. Like betta fish, Anna and I sometimes freak out when left sitting around too long in the same room. And if we can get our fins all tangled over the course of a single weekend, what will we do with three weeks of uninterrupted Apartment Time? Fortunately, there will be much distraction. Various friendsandrelations are clamoring for final meals and drinks before we leave. And then there's the actual leaving part. We have 25 boxes to fold, pack, tape, and ship off. We have 175 feet of bubble wrap (you can't begin to imagine our excitement about this). We have vast swaths of furniture to be sold. We have a couch the size of the fucking Titanic (want to buy a couch?). We have too many books.

But that's the key to surviving joblessness. You've got to work through it. We all need to feel productive, to collect those check marks and gold stars that made elementary school more than a drawn out crayon-eating competition. Without tasks, life is meaningless. The sense of motion is largely what distinguishes the living from the dead, and it's dangerously easy to slip into the morass of ass--sitting on your ass, being a lazy-ass, feeling like ass, and the final, terminal stage, asshattedness.

So you make lists, and goals, and try to meet them. I think it's strange that almost all of us have trouble accepting a trouble-free existence. Apparently paradise is not perfect sloth, but the perfect, fitted task. It's just like that scene in The Matrix when the Agent tells a particularly stoned-looking Keanu Reeves that the first Matrix was actually a paradise where nothing went wrong. Turns out the humans couldn't believe it and freaked out, correctly discerning the whole thing was a sham. Disgusted, the machines built a greasy, grimey Manhattan for the humans to live in instead. And everyone was bitterly, viciously happy.

So that's what we need to do: Keep New Yorkifying our blissful new independence. Why do we have to sully perfect sloth with character-building activities? I don't know, but if I could figure it out I'd be a happier man. Keeping the peace between my urge to sit around chilling and my ceaseless drive to check something off a list (anything! off any list! let me sort my post-it notes!). It's only because of my previous voyages through the desert of Total Freedom that I can stand it.

We must be strong, and maybe just a tiny bit lazy, to survive.

Alpha waves from the Media Lab

I got an email today from Cameron Marlow, who is conducting a survey of bloggers for his PhD thesis at MIT's Media Lab. I'm intrigued to fill out the survey, and I feel like I should be hounding this guy for his research as I prepare to rappel down into the nerd pits myself next year. But, just so you all know Cameron's on the level here, he has his own blog, and the poor dude just got dumped.
I am sorry, Cameron, and I admire your fearless embrace of the medium. I will fill out your survey.
---
Meanwhile, I showed Anna his post...
A: Most people are honest on their blogs.
E: I'm honest...ish
A: Yeah, about Linux.
---
So, um, yeah, more power to you, Marlow. Stay away from hard drugs until you're sure you've moved beyond the F. Scott Fitzgerald phase of the breakup.

Linux, the update

So I finally installed Damn Small Linux on there. It really works well--it runs quickly on the old machine, it only takes up 8% of the 2 gig hard drive, and almost everything works right out of the box. I'm struggling a little bit to get the wireless card working (there's this thing called ndiswrapper that lets you use Windows drivers for wireless cards in Linux....but ees not work for me). Otherwise, things are fantastic.
Now the question is--what to do with this machine? I've resurrected it from its spyware-infected Windows 95 decrepitude, but what should it do in its second life? Apparently, it could make a bitchin' firewall for the home network. Though I think I'd need to get a second ethernet card to make that work. Well, I guess playing with Linux is sort of an end in and of itself, but eh. Or, we could give it away (trying not to forget that this is really Anna's laptop we're talking about here). I'm sort of intrigued by this family--I wish the site was a little better trafficked. It seems weird to choosing among three worthy (?) recipients.
Oooh, if we did give it away, we could "shred" the hard drive first (don't worry, it doesn't hurt) to make sure no personal data lingers on. Life is so full of choices.

Linux!

Sometimes, the pocket-protector side of me comes out. Anna has this old laptop (and I mean old--circa 1998) that's just been crying out for attention. So she's let me play with it, and I decided to install Linux on it. This is a process that, I think, used to be arduous, complicated, and largely pointless, back when every piece of strange hardware had to be individually configured and people did things like write their own device drivers for printers and modems.
No longer. You can download free images of CDs that you can burn and use to install the software with a minimum of fuss. I went with the suspiciously World Music-sounding Ubuntu distribution (their motto: "Linux for Human Beings"). Linux for human beings with faster computers, more like it. So now I'm looking into the more laid-back Damn Small Linux option, which is small enough to fit on one of those business-card shaped mini-CDs. Not really a lot of those lying around the apartment, though. I'm just interested in something that won't take up all of the old laptop's minimal disk space.
Hmmm...after just reading more about Damn Small Linux, it turns out it's based on one of the major Linux flavors (Debian), but it's not quite similar enough that you can just download stuff and expect it to work. So they recommend something else called Bonzai.
The number of distros and options is truly mind-boggling. As are the names. The only subculture that outdoes Linux distributions in silly names is ultimate frisbee teams. A good team name can really hit that high-school-punk-band/freshman-one-act sweet spot.
Anyway. Linux is simpler than you'd think, but more complicated than you then go on hope.
Also, now that I've got this thing working, what should we do with it?

Data error: Abort, Retry, Fail?

Last week I read a hilarious tale of incompetence and foolishness on the part of Time Warner, which managed to misplace the names and social security numbers of more than 600,000 current and former employees. How silly, I thought to myself, that one the world's most powerful media empires hires an expert data security firm to manage its most valuable corporate data--and that firm transports the data around in a fleet of unmarked white vans. How ridiculous, I reasoned, for the missing tapes to ride shotgun, UNENCRYPTED, as the van made it's day's journey, with 19 STOPS. How sheepish they all must feel.
Oh, it was funny, all right, until I got a letter in the mail today. As it turns out, I may be one of the lucky folks whose identities just fell off the back of a truck. Or did it all just slide under the seat like so many battered mix tapes? Did someone spill a milkshake on it and decide to quietly dispose of the sticky mess? Aliens? Spontaneous combustion? Russian mafia? These guys sure as hell don't know. I hope the Secret Service figures it out.
If you do happen to come across my identity, please send it back to me or destroy it in a manner befitting someone who never wanted to see himself tossed into the back of a van on an unencrypted backup tape in the first place.

Ministry of Housing

Wow: this thing is awesome. For anyone who's tried apartment-hunting from a remote location, or in a location they don't know well, this tool is really amazing. Courtesy of BoingBoing.

Back in the N Y of C

It was a long trip to California, fraught with peril and last-minute housing decisions. It was informative, exhausting, and now it's over. I got to see my lovely cousin perform in an off, off, off off Broadway play (and not just because it was in San Francisco). She was fabulous, and the production was buoyed by a strong supporting cast of free wine, served by the inimitable fish waiters. You'll have to ask her. I also got to crash at the phantastic apartment of the young Jedi Haseman, as I shall now call him for his fascination with green glowing things.
In unrelated hospitality news, Anna and I have been planning our Cheesus party for quite a while now, and we finally got our act together. Turns out we're not the first people to think of this idea. But at least our rendition will involve poached eggs, mimosas and other resurrection staples. Hey: hosanna.

March on the move

March has snuck up on me like a stealthy sunbeam creeping across the bed. Exactly like that, actually, since I'm finding it harder and harder to sleep through the matinal blast of photons that now stream through the flimsy curtains every morning.
Fun-loving March has brought me a few wacky presents this year, including a new form of spam for the website--track back spam. Nobody ever really tracks back to this thing anyway, so I'm going to turn it off.
March has also given us Martha Stewart.
And, of course, March has also brought its traditional gift, springtime lust. In this case, I'm lusting for a new laptop to while away my days and garble my yarbles. So far the main contenders are this nifty Sony Vaio and the similar (though cheaper) Dell. The only problem with the Dell is that the keyboard is small. And it doesn't look quite as cool. Oh, March, what have you done to me?

The new look

New colors, new boxes, new dashes, less serifs. A few kinks remain to be worked out (where is Wake? Wake, where aaaare you?), but I'm feeling good about things overall. If you think it sucks--in fact, if the site inspires any emotion strong enough to move your fingers to the keyboard--please feel free to email me.

Another story about tired.

The S train is not a complicated train. It shuttles back and forth from Grand Central to Times Square, all day, every day. It is always local, and always express. Sometimes the music is bluegrass, sometimes it's mariachi, but the trip is pretty hard to screw up.
Today, I got on the S train with one of my coworkers and had a nice chat with him on the ride west after work. We continued to chat as the doors opened and he stepped off, waiting expectantly for me to do the same. "Oh no," I said. "I get off at 59th." "You're going to stay on the Shuttle?" He looked like I'd suddenly turned into an ax-wielding clown. No, no I wasn't. A clown or staying on the shuttle.
So just be wary: the subway can turn on you at any time, when you least expect it.

One hour to the finish line

National Novel Writing Month is nearly at an end. So who's winning? Well, these folks have crossed the 50,000 word finish line. Wow--apparently, 5200 people have done this. The New York City winner? Lizzy2150, whose novel excerpt offers the ingenious notion of arranging the dead vampire on your back so nobody stabs you. I am so proud.

Russian Teenagers

Wireless insecurity. Is it just me, or are the forces of evil really trying to crush my peace-loving WiFi republic? Seriously, it seems like every day something weird happens on the network at home. I just spent an hour trying to get my laptop back online--even though it has an ethernet connection to the router. I feel like a man looking at might be an odd lump on his toe. What's my routing table supposed to look like, anyway?
And there's always weird "attacks" my various dilapidated firewall products tell me about with warning dings and alarmist pop-up windows. I just got this log-viewer (offered for free on the Internet by a genially insane Scandinavian, as is customary), which seems to have taken on some protection duties without being prompted. Whatever.
I give up, precocious Russian teenagers. For tonight.

Playing the changes

It's been too long with the orange and the green...and the sword. It's time for a few changes around here, especially since I can't seem to put the time into this site I used to. While some feel that the site already has plenty about me on it, others have convinced me to be a little more personal. Identities of guilty parties will still be withheld, of course. But it only seems fair.
And finally, I hate to see the site languishing, so I'm asking for a little help from the person who's already a second author on this blog. It's going to be a really busy time for me in the next few weeks, so I'm hoping Anna can help me fill in the blanks. Hi, Anna!

Debates, Bulges, Mountain Goats: An Interview with On the Media

I was lucky enough to be interviewed on the NPR program On the Media for this weekend's show. It was a radio version of International Papers, the column I regularly write for Slate (along with three other contributors). I had a great time on the show, though I did feel utterly inadequate as a fill-in for the spot's regular guest, Martin Walker.
The segment is available for listening at On the Media now, and a transcript should be up by Tuesday.
Incidentally, this blog is getting its first official plug from the show, so if that's how you got here, welcome!

Face of the enemy

I was looking through the site's statistics again, and guess who's a frequent visitor? A certain company, which markets software designed to spam message boards, blogs and open forums. Here's one of their joy-filled customer testimonials:

Thank you for your extra work,
i'm realy happy !
(like a child who is going to play
with his new toy:)

Next time you find spam on your site, think of these bastards. Email them at info@php-soft.com. They could use some spam.

Further adventures in new media research research

I keep finding these interesting programs and then discovering some loony project they've done, and my illusions are crushed. But really, who am I to doubt the legitimacy of MIT for encouraging a student to write her song, "Life is a movie"? Is there a middle ground of real, interesting work between the overzealous theory and the musical term papers? I hope so.

game theory

No, not the Beautiful Mind kind. But critical academic study of computer games. This is what I want to do. I can join the great debate between the ludologists and the narratologists--are videogames best understood as games or stories? I say, it depends on the game and the story. Let a hundred flowers bloom, let a thousand doctorate programs offer me full funding to study this great question. For example, the Center for Computer Games Research. Yes! Alas, it's in Copenhagen.
I will attend the online Mecca of this new religion, Ludology, until I have learned The Way.

Today's fanmail

Nothing like an exclamation-riddled, factually inaccurate rant to get you going in the morning. I'm glad my crappy poetry could fuel your outrage, Sarah Beet at Yahoo.com. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find any of your work anywhere. Who knows, maybe you are more than a bitter wreck who emails strangers to tell them their writing sucks. But I doubt it. Good luck finding a better crutch, sweetums.

Hi Ed,
You shouldn't put such wretched poetry online. As yet
another privileged (Princeton!) Slater (with his own
vanity web site!) don't you realize you are one of the
less talented of self-promoting spoiled brats who work
for Ivy-only publications? Now, if you actually had
creative talent, there might be an excuse for your
lame little blog...
Good for you,
SB

Back from the northlands

After four nights and five days in the charming localities of York and Bridgton, Anna and I have returned to muggy Manhattan. The trip was great, not least because I didn't check email once. The cell phone did slither itself into use once or twice, briefly, but we managed to keep the situation nearly technology-free. Except for the canoe.
I'll put up a few pics as I go. Here is the first.

OUT

The rain in Maine had generally better fall somewhere else. Because Anna and I are going there tomorrow morning, and I demand sunny skies and salty, surly New Englanders.
We will see lighthouses. We will eat lobster. We will read this huge book.
Oh yes.
We're outta here.

adopt a couch

Please buy my couch. And Hutch. They need a good home.
Ikea couch and a hutch in the Village

metablog moment

Today's metablog moment is brought to you by a sense of thwarted opportunity and the letter W, as in "Why don't people call me back when I'm reporting?"

From a recent email I sent:

Good call on the subtext. If I had more moments, I would blog about it. When am I going to write my pithy critiques of weird movies? Unseen Cinema, it will be called. Perhaps a whole separate blog. When will I do this? When I will I write my essay about what Doom III means to America? When? And when will I write the other 2.5 stories I have planned?

Not today.

Hello Photo

That's right. Look right. There's a picture there. And a protophotoblog that it's coming from. I feel better about myself already. Not that I've done anything useful today.
But I have to say, the category archive thing is pretty sweet.
I need to update this at the bottom and link to all the people who've made the software that make all of this possible. Thank you, Internet!

fashion monkeys

From Boingboing,
a celebrity photographer who has recently become fascinated with artful, pensive, high fashion portraits of monkeys.
I went through a period when I exclaimed "monkey" whenver I wanted to say something funny but had nothing funny to say. Ah, primates.

closets

Orange Juice: check.
Coffee: check.
Twenty minutes wrestling with closet door, trying to align its little runner things, get it the right distance from the wall, and screw in its chewed-up bolt fifty times: check.
Sponge grubby paw-prints off white closet exterior caused by exposure to closet interior's mungy mechanism: check.

The problem with making fun of male gymnastics is that you might start your story "so last night we were watching male gymanstics." The rug is pulled out right from under you--how can you make fun of male gymnastics when you're a male gymnastics fan?
So, last night, we were watching male gymnastics, and NBC's Clueless Commentator (they've got one for every event) says to the Informed Commentator (not present at every event): "The Korean team could be getting ready to have their coming out party." Now, we thought this was pretty funny, even as male gymnastics fans. But a quick Google search will tell you that it just means something different once you slap some chalk on your thighs and put on the short shorts. A Google search for mens gymnastics "coming out party" reveals the phrase is common parlance for confident young men demonstrating their grace and commitment in front of a public audience. Just completely different from the results you get with plain old "coming out party".
Crazy. I'm never going near the closet without a screwdriver again.

Bitmapped love

Anna has sent me this as a small gesture of her affection. In the image, we are being chased by (depending on your allegorical proclivities) a) Moby Dick's land-based cousin, Big Green Stinky Ben, b) the global ennui of spiralling budget deficits, frayed alliances and environmental mismanagement, or c) the republic of Ireland.

hitman spam

That's right...I got hitman spam. Here it is in all its glory. There's nothing like ordering a contract kill from the convenience of your computer. Reverse lookup the victim, Mapquest their address, and IM your friends all at the same time! Isn't technology amazing?
This could just be me, but do you think this guy is trying to bank off the success of the Bourne movies? Or is he just simply, elegantly nuts? There have to be easier ways to collect working email addresses. Maybe it's an attempt to turn pettty blackmail into a mass market business.

I'm a freelance european hitman for hire.
If you need to take down someone, I will do the job and be gone long before anybody notice.
I am an ex-special forces soldier and i'm offering you 8 years of experience and professional skills.
I can be EVERYWHERE.
Use me for your private justice.
This is NOT a game nor a joke !!!
BTW : you will be amazed if you knew how many jobs I got only from the internet...

ps If you want to get in touch with "Troy" yourself, just email me.

only if I'm waving a flag...

From Facts on File's History Database:

In Britain, the development of automobiles was stymied by the 1865 Locomotive Act, which limited speeds to 7 km/h (4 mph) in the countryside and 3 km/h (2 mph) in built-up areas. The act also stipulated that a self-propelled vehicle had to be preceded by a guard waving a red flag during the day and a lantern at night. The "Red Flag Act" was finally repealed in 1896, giving British inventors and entrepreneurs a greater incentive to build and sell automobiles.

Quoted without permission from Volti, Rudi. "automobile." In Volti, Rudi. The Facts On File Encyclopedia of Science, Technology, and Society, Volume 1. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 1999. Facts On File, Inc. World History Online.

Another day in the Web

I've spent another day lost in the extended reaches of the World Wide Web. That phrase is getting archaic--why, I remember books like The Idiot's Guide to the WWW appearing in the mid-nineties! And the Internet just doesn't cut it either. Well, I guess we'll have to wait for it to improve further before giving it a new moniker like The Grid or Big Brother.
Anyway, all this is to note that as we speak my computer is making a backup of this website. That's right, people. We've spent the last two years living on the razor's edge, without a safety net. Over a pool of acidic lemon juice. You get the point. No backup. Now there's a backup. It's taking a long time. Also, there' all these web pages I forgot I made and have stopped linking to. All these photos. Some of them should live on here in Cyberland.
Also, I'm planning to create a Wiki here for the advancement of Anna and B's orthonomagony. Hopefully not emphasis on the agony. I'll post about that more when there is some.

too late for ode to pasta salad

I was going to take a picture of the monstrous pasta salad that has been sustaining me for the past four days and post it online. It was going to accompany an Ode to Pasta Salad. But I just finished eating it, and I'm not sure I'm ready to write a Eulogy for Pasta Salad. I did buy a new six-pack of beer, so maybe I'll change my mind later.
In related news (why am I blogging at 7:15 pm on Saturday night?), the problem with freelancing is that you abandon the structure of the traditional work week. Sure, sometimes you get to hang out with the weird Middle Of The Day people at your apartment building, but what does a weekend mean when you have no week? It don't mean shit, especially when you're on deadline(s).
Back to work.

Turkey

I have returned to the ancestral manor, our little house on the Aegean coast. It is sunny, and hot, and the water feels great. As usual, the country has moved ahead relentlessly while I away. A new road has stretched itself across the other side of our bay, leading to a new "seven star" hotel in the next bay where before there was only an illegal fish farm lurking shyly.
Other things remain the same...a stray dog just wandered across our porch. The beats of shoreside discos struggle to drown out the insistent rhythms of crickets and cicadas. Every year we return, our village moves a little closer in spirit to Miami Beach. Our nightclubs and docks are apparently the best stalking grounds for starlets and divorcees. There are certainly a lot of ill-advised swimsuit decisions being taken out there on a daily basis.
But grand (in every sense) society aside, things are getting better. While the streets may appear messy "to the untrained eye," in my father's words, we can see that there's less trash around than last year. It feels odd to be a long-term resident who only shows up for two or three weeks a year. You really see the differences. Well, at least it gives us something to talk about over our books, and fuels the eternal, distractible outrage without which this family would float rudderless upon the sea of life.
Vacations are nice, even if I do have work.

the new place

Anna and I just moved into a new apartment together. It is spacious, air-conditioned, and generally fabulous, but the move-in process has been exhausting. Rather than tell you about all of our tribulations, I’m going to zero in on just this one:

“Picking out curtains.” The phrase has always had a comic tinge for me, probably because its provenance is based entirely in jokes. Somebody comments on the new chumminess between two detectives on a crime show. “Yeah, whatever. It’s not like we’re picking out curtains.” The idea that anyone would actually do such a thing, of their own volition, was unimaginable.

On July 3d, Anna and I picked out curtains. It actually was funny, but only because laughter is a coping mechanism. It was funny, in the “beyond’ portion of Bed, Bath & Beyond, to be poring over little rectangular packages of alien textiles, and trying to imagine how many inches there might be between the floor and the ceiling in our apartment. There were profound psychological issues at stake, and we were utterly unprepared for them. Blinds or curtains? Wooden or steel rods? Sheers? What the hell is a valence, anyway? And why do windows needs scarves? It's the only time I've ever wondered if the fab five have a hotline.

In the end, true to form, we elected for the cheapest options, and decided to take home our very own piles of pleated joy. The plan was to put the curtains up ourselves. It seemed easy enough. Five easy steps, listed right there on the side of the curtain rod box.

Right.

Something like 7 hours, 5 failed exploratory drill-holes, and one trip to Gracious Home later, we have the curtain rods up. The rods we had are designed to be mounted on the wall above the window. But we have no wall above the window, and the ceiling is concrete too tough to be drilled by the little battery-powered thing we bought. So we had to mount it on the walls. But the walls are fraught with reinforced corners, metal pipes, and residents who can’t measure or drill straight. Not that we’re that incompetent, but we had no ladder and the only way to conduct this operation was to remain crouched on the 5” windowsill, trying not to lean too much on the glass leading to the 6th story of Manhattan.

But we have triumphed, with only minor permanent damage. The curtains look great. No longer must we rise at dawn. Yeah!

by the eastern sea

I'm back home, safe and sound, though I think the turgid schlock available for viewing on United has turned my stomach.

The end of the trip was even more of a blur than the beginning, but once again the limited perception of my .3 megapixel camera has accurately captured my own rushed memories of the experience.

We went to an appliance factory, where we saw washing machines popping off a production line at the rate of one per 15 seconds. Amazing.

We drove on to Busan, Korea's second-largest city and a major port. We stayed in a waterfront hotel with major Atlantic City pretensions, casino and all. The room was fabulous, but I only got to see it for a few hours, since we departed at 5 am for the long journey home. It had this amazing view:

What you're looking at is not, I assure you, the Sea of Japan. Our guide was quite clear on the point that it is in fact the Eastern Sea, and that those wily Japoanese have hijacked the body of water in the atlases of the world. So when in Korea...get it right.

Now, many hours and a few vehicles later, I'm back in the Village. And I miss Anna.

lakeside

Hello mother, hello father,
here I am at Lake Geongju.

It's gorgeous here at the Hilton. We arrived last night after another long day of press touring. Our bus has a big sign on it that says U.S. Press Tour, and I keep thinking it says U.S. Pro Tour. Hordes of excited schoolgirls have thus far failed to line the roads as we travel. Maybe they're protesting.

In any case, today is our "fun day". Instead of touring factories and having formal mass interviews with R&D people, we're going to tour the cultural splendors of southern Korea. Maybe we'll get to visit this amusement park. I can see it from my hotel room.

So here we are in Seoul. The trip was uneventful, except for the fun of trying to figure out who else was on the junket with me. I've now met all the people from New York, and in fifteen minutes I'll meet the rest of the gang from San Francisco.
My major disappointment right now is that the damn digital camera Pop Sci lent me for this trip isn't working. The battery doesn't seem to be charging. So instead I'll have to use to the camera on the voice recorder Anna gave me. That's right--she gave me a voice recorder with a camera on it. Now, sure, it might be .3 megapixels, but hey--at least I can show you where I am. This is the view from my hotel room. Rockin, eh?

Junketnaut

I can't believe I'm going to Korea. My garment bag can't believe how much crap I just stuffed into it. Clearly, it's not prepared for a week of business travelling. But I don't have one of those little rolly bags. I just don't.
I'll have the laptop with me, so if time permits I'll try to keep my loyal readers up to date on my adventures in the far east. Wohoo!

Bang, Bang

My research into the gunfight at O.K. Corral culminated in a little hands-on exploring with a 102-year-old Colt .45 and a .357 Magnum. Here is your hero, just shootin'.

our hero's continuing adventures

Where is Ed, you ask? Well, in Arizona, obviously. Working on a secret project codenamed "OK Corral". Today, in pursuit of this higher calling, I drove to Tombstone with Mary, Anna's younger sister. And by "I drove" I mean "Mary drove", becuase, to be honest, I hadn't even gotten to the part about the gunfight in the Gunfight at OK Corral book I was reading before I went to interview people about it.
So yeah, that's the secret project. But I had a pretty good time out there in the 105 degree heat. I learned more about Endicott Peabody (haloed, beefcake founder of my alma mater, Groton School--flattering summary here) and the six months he spent in Tombstone in 1882. While there, he worked out, boxed anyone who challenged him (including the boxinest miner, whom he beat, and, potentially, the Methodist minister), and generally did the lord's work. Seriously, though, everyone loved him out there, from the Bishop of Arizona to the gamblers, miners and saloon keepers. While he was there he raised some $5,000 to build Arizona's first Episcopalian church.
Then, he went back to Massachussetts, founded Groton, taught FDR, etc, etc. At school, he's credited with the idea of building a prep school "preparing" students not for college but for "the active work of life." Knowing the chaos he saw in Tombstone, I understand a little better what he meant.

New Digs

Ok, so I've finally made the switch. Sorry to all those who miss the old color scheme--maybe I'll bring its of it back as we move along down the bitstream. And don't worry, I will get the poetry back in here. It was a titanic struggle against evil to create that right pane.
But look, look! This thing is awesome! A calendar, even. Julian, no less. Could you make that all by yourself? No? Well, I'd make fun of you, but you're one of three people I know, so that wouldn't be any fun.
Time to go to bed.