coming soon

more to force me into writing here again, but i'm planning on:

• updating my annual music lists


• waxing poetic on the joys of ruby


• documenting my adventures in home-brewed beer (assume I get around to the brewing part)


• proclaiming that twitter will kill the blog, just like the internet killed your television, or video killed the radio star


• proclaiming that twitter is dead

i'm actually a huge animal collective fan

From the QC twitter feeds:

Marten:
There needs to be a word for "I recognize that [band name] is
critically acclaimed, and rightfully so, but I still don't like them."

Dora:
That word is "Pitchforky." As in, "Animal Collective have some good
songs but overall they're a little Pitchforky for my taste."

Fan Boy

Ok - I'll admit it. I am completely obsessed with all things M.I.A. It all started with her completely brilliant single, Paper Planes. Then I started getting into her Bollywood cover of Jimmy (I posted the videos here on Oct 10th). Now I find out that she has covered Tom Waits' fantastic intro to "The Wire" - another current obsession of mine. And she is having a baby - gotta respect a fellow parent, innit? South Asian massive represent.

The Ballot

Here is what you need to know:

• Barack Obama
• Yes on 1A (bullet train baby!)
• No on 4 (no to right wing anti-abortion fundies)
• No on 8 (no on hate)

For more, read the SF Guardian:
http://tinyurl.com/59lqbl

"the young voter"

so the other night, this hippieish lady comes a-canvassing to our door, telling us about the importance of the election, and not letting up in these waning days of the campaign etc, etc ... donate money to the DNC ... help make calls ... get out the vote. so far, so good - i'm with her and i've even pulled out my checkbook.

then she talks about how young voters are key to the obama campaign, and how important it is to get the youth vote out. and then she adds - "you know how those young voters are: whoa, duude - i totally needed to do something important today, but i can't remember what it is".

umm - wtf? i realize that young voters have traditionally been a flakey demographic, but to think that they aren't voting because they are too stoned/hung-over to remember the election??? i think you've missed the point of the obama campaign which has inspired millions of young people. believe me - they won't be "forgetting" to vote. i have yet to meet a so-called young voter that wasn't voting because they "like forgot and stuff". perhaps, back in your time, you were all too busy tripping on acid and "forgot" to vote against nixon. ok - no more quoted "forgetting". seriously though, folks like this are completely missing the reasons that guide the youth vote. young people often don't vote, because they feel that the issues aren't relevant to them. because they feel alienated and disenfranchised. it is a good thing the obama campaign as a whole understands this and has taken a more respectful approach towards younger voters.

of course, like most polite and slightly confrontation-averse people, this monologue only happened in my head, so that i could blog about it later. i quietly wrote her a check and wished her luck. i wonder how many blog posts stem from exactly these types of unspoken discussions where you badly want to say something but ...

waiting for next tuesday

jimmy

The original:

The remix:

Two years too late, but I'm really hearting M.I.A.'s second album (Kala).

the wire

seriously - if you haven't checked out the show yet, add it to your netflix queue. NOW.

the first couple of episodes scared the crap out of me, because it felt a little too close to home. i live in a fairly diverse neighborhood, with a large african-american population. i have heard those shots, seen kids getting into some bad shit. but i persisted. and there is both hope and despair as you go along. it really becomes pretty riveting by the time you hit episode 6. the show is full of flawed characters flirting with redemption. redeeming characters riddled with flaws. it gets a little coarse at times, but the writing is fantastic.

and once you are well into it, inspire yourself with this 43 folders piece on the wire and creativity.

make it stop

i think i have a problem. i might have an addiction to pre-election polls.

every time there is a poll that shows obama ahead, i get this heady short-term high, even though i realize that it means nothing and that another poll could show a completely different result tomorrow. and every time i see a mccain leaning poll, i seem to cast myself in a pall of doom and gloom. i become anxious and twitchy, constantly checking the news sites for a new poll that has a more favorable result. these short-term swings are complete rubbish, and i should know better than to get caught up in the ebbs and flows of a chaotic system. and yet i can't help myself. just one quick peek ... maybe it will say something i like. and then the inevitable self-loathing, the paranoia, the fear of racism. the occasional wave of excitement and feeling of invincibility; the "yes we can".

all because of the stupid polls. and where are we now? back to the pre-convention pre-bounce deadlock. all that back and forth ... for what?

i need to move on with my life. please!

friday

It's friday, which means I get to drop some of my freshest links at you:

• Ubiquity - the freshest firefox extension since sliced_bread.xpi


• RAD


• POP! menus using jquery


• Gravity games


• hmm...


• Obama rickrolls America - this was funnier a couple of weeks ago

OK - so "freshest" was a bit euphemistic. Still ... enjoy!

water conservation for the rest of us

here is what I came up with for my guest-blog spot on andromeda*arts. enjoy:

we’re in the middle of a water shortage and conservation is the hot new buzzword this summer. so i figured i’d do a post on creative water conservation tips you won’t find elsewhere. yup …

1. drink imported beer instead of water. this way you don’t waste our precious local water reserves (or the precious water reserves that go into local beer). and if you get drunk enough you can conveniently pass out, and forget about all our problems
2. shower at the gym. many gyms have actually turned down the water pressure to deal with the water crisis. also, there is something about public showering that really makes you get in, tend to the essentials and get out. i mean, how many of us want to take ponderous, lingering showers in the company of smelly strangers? and for those of you that like ponderous, lingering showers in public - burning man starts next week.
3. use the toilet at home. that way you can avoid the flush and “keep it mellow” as long as possible. keeping it mellow in public restrooms is not considered polite.
4. if you have a child, use an inflatable bath tub. much less water consumed than filling up a regular bath. if you do not have a child see tip 1.
5. vote obama, support open source software and ride a bike. haven’t quite figured out how to tie these in to water conservation, but i figured it couldn’t hurt, and it gets me up to the magic number of 5.

that’s all i got folks.

tar-jay

Best kept secret in hella-stylin' clothes for guys? The Target women's section. Seriously, I've scored a multiple awesome jackets, hoodies, hats and other miscellaneous accouterments here. The men's section seems to be dominated by lumpy looking midwestern crap that looks like it has been recycled from the 90s. Where the men's S (if it exists), is designed to fit a "small" football player.

The women's section on the other hand seems to have a much better pulse on hip. Fashion has gotten androgynous enough that plenty of the stuff here works irrespective of your gender sensibilty (which was outmoded to begin with). And the sizes are better suited for my smallish frame anyway. Why - I just picked up this sweet patterned hoodie with birds and skulls and keys and anchors and shit.

twiddly deet

As many folks have noticed, this space has been dormant for a while. But, if you noticed carefully, the little sidebar feeds have been chattering away. I've been in more of a microblogging state of mind, so for those of you inclined to follow the background noise of my brain, I'm at http://twitter.com/shreddd. If you are completely new to twitter, it is something of a cross between a blog (with a 140 character per post limit) and a message board. It only starts to make sense once you have a community of interacting twitterers tweeting together. Yes - the whole thing is silly and ridiculous, but it gets vaguely addictive over time.

I also show up occasionally in other random corners of the intarwubs - yelp, goodreads, flickr and offsprung being the places where I'm most likely to post something with any regularity.

OK - now you know where to find me if you are truly motivated.

whitespace, curly braces and other programming constructs

I've been toying with Ruby and Python lately. There are some very very nice features built into their programming ethos. /* If you don't care about programming, stop reading now */

However, there are certain syntactical vagaries that have been bothering me.
1. Using whitespace to demarcate blocks of code
This is a good idea in terms of readability. However, it is a *terrible* idea when trying to parse through diffs, or sorting out levels of nesting. In general, whitespace shouldn't matter when you do a diff. Except, now it does. Curly braces are a really nice way to differentiate levels of nesting and blocks of code. At least Ruby allows this, which is why I might migrate from Python to Ruby with braces.

2. Passing in function parameters without parentheses
Perl tried to create a programming language syntax that incorporated all existing syntaxes known to man. There are, like, 256 different ways to invoke a function. Which is completely unnecessary. C actually got this right early on. Function parameters go in () and are separated by commas like this: (param1, param2). This is clean and intuitive. While Python and Ruby support this form, they also borrowed a bad idea from perl - simply using whitespace to separate parameter names from functions, and from each other. You don't really want to sit and wonder as to whether something is a keyword or a function parameter or something else. You never want to borrow programming constructs from Perl. As useful as it is, Perl is the epitome of a hacky language. A bit like English - very versatile and robust, but extremely irregular.

3. Lack of strong typing
I go back and forth on this one. You might argue that Python/Ruby are in fact strongly typed. But anytime you can call a function and not be sure as to whether it returns a string or an int (unless by design) you have the potential for some crazy typecasting.

That having been said, I really like some aspects of these languages:
1. Iterables (yummy!)
2. Forcing code blocks to be indented at the same level. There are some good things about readability - I just think it should go hand in hand with the curlies.
3. No terminating semi-colons
4. Intuitive use of operands
5. Very powerful and simple parsing libraries
6. More to come ...

Like I said, I'm still a n00b with these languages, so call me out if I'm wrong here.

Introducing Jay Smooth

I ran into the Ill Doctrine vlog a little late in the game (thanks Lil), but this man represents all the reasons why I fell in love with hiphop way back when. Smart, political and irreverent are all spliced together in this video blog. And he actually understands hiphop from the inside.

Check out this nugget:
"Science has proven that any meme becomes played out precisely at the moment when people start calling it a meme".

And if you want to delve deeper, here is a nice little clip on race:
http://www.illdoctrine.com/2008/07/how_to_tell_people_they_sound.html

To ER and back

As the tinu would say - "Uh! Oh!".

We were walking over to a friend's when her eye started to swell up. Her lip started getting all fat. Puffy cheeks. Hives. We were in the midst of a full blown allergy attack. Neither of us had dealt with a massive allergy before, so we were a little confused. But we managed to make it to the E.R. (Thanks Mike). A bit of shouting, some benadryl and a nap later she seemed to be on the mend. But it was all a little freaky.

The scary thing is that we still have no idea what triggered the reaction.

Observation: The Kaiser E.R. doctors are incredibly nice! I feel very grateful.

Update: Post E.R. photo

Yes, I was mean ...

... in calling a friend out for sending me a forward, but alarmist spam really bugs me.

I guess I won't bother with a "top ten ways to identify a bogus forward" list, but I did find this bit of advice that I found online useful:

Take your time. Resist any urge to “act now”.

When you get a forwarded mail, your impulse should not be - ohmigodletmesendthistoeveryoneiknow. Instead, consider sitting on it. Don't ask yourself - could this be real? Ask yourself - could this be spam? If the answer is even maybe, then it is probably junk.

if moon was cookie

does not refer to magnetic north pole

ff3 update

so i've been sampling the three different ports (win/mac/linux). one of the key developments with this release is the decision to "go native" with the UI. in other words, the browser is much more tightly integrated with the look and feel of the underlying OS.

the mac version is slick, and feels like a bonafide apple browser. the windows version is shiny and vistafied, but i'll probably get used to it soon enough. and then there is the linux version. the firefox people took the "go native" directive a little too seriously here, which means that the linux version looks like crap. yup - it has shitty icons, mismatched fonts, and poor anti-aliasing ... everything we love about linux based UIs. one of the nice things about the old firefox was that it had a clean simple design, and generally looked good, even under linux. i'm hoping i can reskin it back to the old look, and i'm hoping that mozilla realizes that they have better graphic designers than the bit bangers that work on linux (who are extremely smart people but a little command line happy). just because you can dereference a pointer doesn't make you a visual artist.

ff3

I just got the new Firefox, and it is *blazing* fast. Slick looking too! Me likey.

If I ever get around to it, I will post a completely subjective, opinionated and non-comprehensive review pimping the Firefox. But a lot of the memory and speed issues that dogged the old version seem to have gone away.

Punch IE in the Face

bikes on board

i've been pretty good about riding my bike in to the oakland office when i can. but the berkeley site has always been slightly more challenging, because it is way high on top of a hill. ok - that is really just an excuse, because they have a shuttle where one could theoretically load one's bike on the rack, and simply bus it to the top. really this is all about my irrational fear of loading my bike on the rack. which translates to embarrassment at not knowing how to do it properly, and being slightly shy and afraid to ask someone for help in the middle of the commuting time crunch. so yeah - i've been too afraid to try.

UNTIL NOW!

i am happy to announce, that i successfully loaded my bike on the bus today. i even found a nice helpful instructional video, in case you've been grappling with similar issues:

http://www.actransit.org/riderinfo/bikes.wu

saving the world one irrational fear at a time. YES WE CAN!

back in black

yup - the good ol' craptastic "minima" template is back.

mangled

Apparently, I am Shrevas Chiolia (at least according to the Globusworld agenda).

More Chris Glass

Taking the kids to Target


Originally uploaded by chrisglass

I'm feeling a lot of love towards Chris Glass of glass.typepad.com

From the hit new movie ...

"They're zombies.
No, they're strippers.
No, they're... zombie strippers."

I think Snakes On A Plane just got some competition!

non-conundrums

i guess most of our so-called ancient philosophical problems have been solved by science. think about it:

1. chicken and egg - umm - easy - egg - the evolutionary parent of the chicken lays an egg with a slightly mutated piece of DNA, and voila - we have the first chicken egg. Once you start using biological markers to differentiate species, this stops being interesting.

2. tree falls in the forest - NO - it does not make a sound, if there isn't a sound perceiving agent around. sound is a psychological construct, and simply how we perceive vibrations in a medium. no "we" - no sound.

3. one hand clapping - either bart simpson has already solved this one, or this is a semantic argument, and thus uninteresting from a philosophical standpoint. (As in, you've already defined a clap as the product of two hands striking each other, so you either have to redefine your original terms or eliminate your wankage. it's like asking what if 2 times 2 were 13 [assume base10 here])

monster noises

can i just say that it is an absolutely sublime moment when you are finally able to go GNNHHRHHHR to your child, and she responds back with another GNNHHRHHHR. we are communicating!

just like that

we have a new look.

and just for being patient with my whims and fancies, i'll leave you with some gorgeous shots of ancient computer hardware: http://www.corememoryproject.com/main.php

when duke is not duke

an observation - when duke is a #1 seed, it generally means that they've got a great record and are actually good. #2 or lower means that they've had a few losses but the committee wouldn't dare give duke a lower seed, because they have so much cachet. any time duke is a 2 or 3 is a good year to pick against them in the early rounds, since it screams overrated.

dammit

boredoms were playing last week and i just found out. i think i'm going to compile a list of awesome shows that i've missed this year. pre-boredoms, we've already got the mag fields, and the mountain goats.

/regex art/

i wonder if anyone has thought of creating literary art using regular expressions. i'm thinking of something along the lines of e.e.cummings but with regular expressions as modifiers instead of whitespace. ideally, it would still hold meaning for the casual viewer, while offering up hidden treats for the l33t.

hmm - now, i'm afraid to google it, because i'll find that someone has already stolen my genius idea before i even thought of it.

and yes - i know that examples would be nice, but it is still only in the concept phase. which means that this may not quite be the genius idea that i made it out to be, once i flesh it out a bit.

telephone hunting

Who knew that buying a regular old phone - the kind that you use for your standard landline hookup - could be such a pain?!! Having only used hand-me-down units for the past several years, and given that my work-from-home schedule requires me to get something slightly less craptastic, I found myself in the market for a new phone. However, the people designing these phones would appear to have never used one before. Seriously, I went in looking for a pretty basic set of features:

• Mute
• Speakerphone
• Ringer on/off switch
• Caller ID
• Cordless handset

Unfortunately, modern phones seem to be chock full of useless features that are never the ones you need. For some reason cordless handsets are getting their design inspirations from cellphones. WTF?? Cellphones are getting smaller to make them easier to fit into your pocket, not because they feel comfortable to hold or talk into. I like the bulkiness of a large handset as you cradle it between your neck and shoulder. Cellphones are actually really cumbersome to use because they are typically the wrong shape and size for an ergonomically sound phone conversation. Now why would you make cordless phones increasingly smaller? Who the hell wants to carry a cordless phone in their pocket? Talk about misguided design choices!

In addition to making these things small and sleek, the manufacturers seem to throw in things like bluetooth and musical ringtones. But it doesn't occur to them to include a mute button or a fracking off switch. Grrr!

And you can't just get a simple phone any more without getting 4 additional handsets to decorate your house. In the end, I got the one phone that the customer rep was embarrassed to have in stock. The "grandma" phone as we like to call it:

Complete with a flashing visual ringer for when the baby is asleep!

James Joyce Predicts the Winner of the Super Bowl

Thusly and thricely slaked he uptrod the spiral staircase and fancied for himself only a briny frieze.

— Give out, Jesuit, or forever in peace may you lie.

Sardonic, sardonic was the smile then adopted. It can twist forever (if the vicars will allow, if the oxen pull the plow).

— Dearly beloved, he quipped through shut mouth, did not Rapunzel cry from on high?

She skipped with a slow whistle to the first stone slab. As at Young Colin's, on the eve of Fata Morgana, all rose quietly. How could it be remiss?

Thanatopsis. Requiescat In Pace.

Prediction: Unclear

JJ and other famous authors call the big game at McSweeney's.

if you has got pubes you can vote

I had an Ali-G moment, and totally couldn't remember the name of that pet detective guy or whatever.

And Finally - Top 10 records of 2007

Which really should have been Top 10 #2 albums of 2007, since all of these were very deserving records, and yet, I couldn't justify a #1 slot for any of these.

• The Field - From Here We Go Sublime (Kompakt)
  
• Social Studies - This is the World’s Biggest Hammer (Homeroom)
  
• Animal Collective - Strawberry Jam (Domino)
  
• M.I.A. - Kala (Interscope)
  
• Nathamuni Brothers - Madras 1974 (Fire Museum)
  
• Soundtrack - THE DARJEELING LIMITED (Abkco)
  
• Battles - Mirrored (Warp)
  
• Six Organs Of Admittance - Shelter From The Ash (Drag City)
  
• Jose Gonzalez - In Our Nature (Mute)
  
• Radiohead - In Rainbows (S/R)
  

Reviews and other possibilities for this list (stuff I haven't had a chance to check out yet) to follow ...