analog

mark me down, mark me up

I've been recently introduced to Markdown. Markdown provides you with a simple syntax for creating text documentation that can be easily converted to HTML.

If you've ever used a wiki, it is pretty much the same principle. For example, headers are just underlined words. And bulleted lists can be created by simply using a bunch of asterisks. Like zis:


Title
=====
* item 1
* item 2
* item 3


What makes Markdown powerful is that the syntax is decoupled from a specific web service (such as a wiki). This means that you can write your docs in your favorite text editor (insert obligatory emacs vs. vi showdown reference), and convert it to HTML with a single command. The standardized format means you have very elegant looking README text files, that easily turn into first class html pages once passed through the Markdown converter.

There seems to be a whole eco-system that has evolved around Markdown, and it appears to be the format of choice for a number of git based code repositories. Now if only Blogger supported the Markdown syntax.

And once again, I've jumped on the bandwagon much later than I should have.

when in doubt, drop core

Now reading

Bicycle Diaries - David Byrne, If On A Winter's Night A Traveler - Italo Calvino, Pragmatic Thinking - Andy Hunt

Listening to

Brazilian Girls, The XX, Ke$ha (you heard that right - Tik Tok is Da Bomb)

On (internet) TV

Old Lost episodes, Parks and Rec, NBA playoffs

Drinking ...

Ritual Coffee, Beckman Vineyards 2008 Cuvee Le Bec (I bought a case - seriously!)

Current internet hangouts

The Changelog, Mashable, Signal Versus Noise

games

Lately, I've been on a mini-quest to find interesting, well-crafted games that are playable in your browser. I am less concerned with the challenge or level of difficulty associated with a game. Rather, I focus on aesthetics, innovation and ideas. Games that are works of art. Stuff that makes me go Wow! within the first 5 minutes of play. You get the idea.

So if you have any suggestions send them my way. I tend to like logic and puzzle based games, but I'm open to anything that pushes the boundaries of design and concept.

I'll offer up an exhaustive list of my findings down the road. You can get started with these two fantastic gems that I've run into:

• Continuity
  
• Auditorium
  

happy 3

although it sometimes feels like the personal blog has gone the way of Diaryland (remember Diaryland?!!) and that this seems a bit like making sound in a vacuum, it is nice to pop in here now and then. must make sure those database tables are getting exercised every once in a while.

very nice little birthday party in the park for the (not so) tiny (anymore) one. managed to find a balance between grown-up conversation and enjoying the kids playing in the park, which is something that i've been striving towards for the better part of three years now. when you can seamlessly work your way through Raaaaaaaandy, nap schedules, Ruby-On-Rails, indie rock coloring bocks, bike geekery, preschool politics and 90s hiphop, I think you can safely declare WIN.

yes - have to drop a link to Aziz Ansari's genius Raaaaaaaandy videos.

ended the evening with a rare night out - De La Soul show at Yoshi's SF. they've totally still got it going on. thanks for a great birthday weekend tinu.

top 10 tings o' 2009

Dominant memes in my personal zeitgeist for the year:

• Ruby-on-Rails


• Bicycle fever


• Twitter


• School days for the family D.


• Aunt Mary's Cafe


• Travel travel travel


• Sesame Street


• weddings


• Infinite Jest


• The farmer's market

Stuff that hasn't been getting as much play:

• DJing at KALX


• Trivia night at the Nomad Cafe


• Java


• The New Yorker


• International business trips


• Yoga


• Blogging


• 43 folders


• The afternoon nap


• Live shows

naughtie naughtie

there seems to be a backlash against the "lifehack" type productivity blogs. apparently the productivity gurus realized that people seemed to be spending more time diddling with productivity pr0n than actually getting things done. merlin mann of 43 folders has had some particularly lucid rants that are worth reading, in and of themselves.

it looks like we are starting to see casualties from the naughts. 5 years from now we'll all be like - "lifehacks - those were so naughties". That said, I'm not sure that the term naughtie or aughtie or whatever the hell we are calling this decade will make it that far either.

remember, remember, the 4th of november!

Last year, at this time, I cried-

Tears of joy because a certain Barack Hussein Obama II gave me hope that the dream was alive. It made me proud to be the father of a mixed-race kid with a funny name.

Tears of sadness at the travesty that is proposition 8.

Things don't seem any easier now, but we must keep on keepin' on.

Damn - this Dogfishhead Palo Santo is some strong beer. It is making me totally emo.

i can care, but not too much.

as i write this, hideki matsui has just powered the yankees to their 27th title. as much as the yankees are annoying, i feel like america needed this win. it will go a long way towards re-establishing the nation's confidence in "the system". the yankees win the world series and the natural order of things will prevail. the economy will fix itself. the greater good of the nation will trump narrow political maneuvering. or so i keep telling myself. of course, this makes some assumptions about the true "natural order of things", but i'll let my optimism carry me forth for now.

and then there is the whole university of florida coach suspending his player for a whole HALF because he tried to gouge this other player's eyes out. WTF??!!! a. why bother? b. how can you possibly expect not to be called out for this weak-assed half assery? doing nothing would have been less controversial than pretending to "punish" your players. ugh.

not sure why, but i've been more into sports this year, than in a while. i'm probably just using it to avoid thinking about the bigger problems facing the world right now. i guess sport provides you with a microcosm of human interaction and emotion. but at it's very core - it doesn't actually matter. our lives go on. people don't die. you can get really passionate and argumentative, without having to hate your fellow human being. i can care, but not too much.

now we can swim any day in november

we went as rakshasas and butterflies (heliconius erato). as david foster wallaces, complete with footnotes. seriously - that was a killer idea. little notecards on one's feet. anyway - it was nice to get dressed up and get out. and it was unseasonably warm too.

need to start documenting ideas for next year though, so that we can put in more advance prep work.

idea sketches:

• Sexy Abe Lincoln


• Bert and Ernie


• Bake Sale Betty


• Very Hungry Caterpillar (green sleeping bag anyone?)


• Hipster Elves

and it is still unseasonably warm - november and 70 degrees outside. and with that nablopomo has been kicked off.

A SUPPOSEDLY FUN BOOK

I am about a third of the way through the late David Foster Wallace's "Infinite Jest", as part of the Infinite Summer online book club. My feelings so far: brilliant, self-indulgent, tedious, funny-in-that-darkly-comic-way, clever, inconsistent. I both love and hate the fact that DFW pretty much makes up words when the occasion calls for it (1). Which gets rather confusing when he also happens to summon his rather prodigious vocabulary of not-made-up words in the same context.

I love his vision of a dystopic near future. Years named after sponsors (2009 would be the "Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment"). Quebecois Separatists fighting U.S. experialism. Apres-Garde cinema. Very funny, very sardonic, very cyberpunk (in the way that modern fiction writers overtly eschew SF, while ingratiating themselves to it at the same time).

At the same time, he could have really used an editor. I mean, all the ultra-detailed chemical and physiological descriptions of real and/or fictional drugs that you will pretty much forget right away? The pages upon pages of tennis scores interspersed with the occasionally interesting bit of information? And those sentences that last forever (some brilliant, some just plain long). I read somewhere that part of the motivation for the digressions and the footnotes was to control the pacing and flow. But seriously - you could have easily had a 700 page masterpiece instead of a 1000 page flawed work of genius.

What else - There is a strong element of the meta throughout the book, where many of the themes and elements play out in other unrelated parts of the book. His use of language mixes formalisms with, like, the causal patois of the 1990s twenty-something. I like this a lot.

Overall, my enjoyment of this book is similar to how I feel about a lot of experimental art/music. The process is just as important as the work. An indulgence that seems hit-or-miss, but is perhaps necessary to this process. Parts of it are very frustrating, parts of it are confusing, parts of it tickle the cerebrum and parts of it just flat-out blow your mind away.

I am very glad I am reading it as part of a book club, since it provides context and discussion for the overall process. It lets me get through the harder parts knowing that there will be some kind of payoff on the discussion boards - some little connection contained therein that makes you go a-ha. Keepin' on keepin' on for now.



1. "Experialism" isn't a word? Well - it should be. I mean how else would you describe the forced expulsion of territory into foreign hands.(a)

a. Sorry - I promised myself that I wouldn't use footnotes, but it is simply too tempting this far into the book.

not a bad day

started waaay too early. someone decided that 6am was a fine time to be up and about.

brewed up some ikea instant cappuccino which turned out to be surprisingly good.

lego time!

family outing at the farmer's market on our bicycles, with the sea-of-clouds clan.

a very thrilling confederations cup final.

hatching a dinner plan - some masala corn, some cliantro tofu ...

about time ...

they integrated email posts with blogger

post punk post

The Mae Shi / PRE - Pretty rad show last night. Haven't been out to see live music in what seems like forever. Random musings from last night:

At this way underground warehouse. I had to drive around the block 3 times before I could find it. The venue is tiny. And very punk rock. This is either going to be fucking brilliant or fucking awful. Either way "fucking" will be the adjective-du-jour.

Everything smells like stale sweat and cigarette smoke. And I could have sworn that the dude in the mosh-pit looked just like my buddy Paul McGrath, if Paul were 19 and had a goatee.

And everyone here is really young. The weird old dude with the bald patch on his head - wait - that's me. Ack! Being friends with someone in the band mitigates things, but only ever so slightly.

OK - this show is fucking radical. As in rad. Both bands are raw and scream-tastic, but have lots of harmonizing and synthy goodness to mix things up.

And seriously Hillyh totally needs to be retroactively included in my fave records of 2008. So good.

Even have time for a midnight Thai food run. That hit the fucking spot.

state of the wub

i think we're approaching some sort of tipping point with facebook where it will simply implode under its own weight. a lot of very smart people have blogged about the life cycle of social networks. once there are enough "undesirable" people entering your social network (the creepy co-worker, the jackass classmate from your high school, the random stalker you met at a party, the homophobic distant relative), you quickly start to lose interest in wanting to share links and post updates because of the potential for an interaction that you would rather avoid.

all social networks have this problem (see friendster, myspace, orkut ...), given that the success of a social network is directly proportional to its size. of course, the fundamental weakness of a social network is also directly proportional to its size. facebook managed to bypass some of these issues by offering an application rich environment, and operating a closed network with advanced privacy settings. but that is quickly starting to catch up with it. most people don't have the time or the energy to fine tune their settings to their desired level of privacy. managing several "groups" of users is a full-time job.

i'm already starting to see a decline in the quality of interesting links and postings on my facebook feed, where interesting is defined as something that pushes the edges of our socio-cultural norms. and the "25 things" meme might just be the beginning of the end i.e. the high-schoolization of facebook culture.

the sad part is that facebook has really done a fantastic job in terms of developing a rich and usable social platform by opening up their API to the public. allowing users to contribute their own applications was a stroke of genius (though one that was effectively negated by the scrabulous fiasco, but whatever).

i think a number of us are waiting to jump to a facebook like platform without the baggage of a an overbloated network. in other words we're waiting for google to dump orkut and reinvent this particular wheel. we'll see how it goes.

umm

WHAT HAPPENED HERE?

Update:
Nevermind - blogger glitch.

neglected

i guess i've been neglecting the whole blog thing in favor of a more hyper-kinetic short-attention span driven medium.

for whatever reason, i've stopped reading blogs these days. which has also translated into lack of updates on my own blog. i guess one has to be a living, breathing part of the blogosphere - a producer as well as a consumer of the bloggywogs for it to work. and with twitter offering the buzz of instant gratification, well, we have little time for the long-form blog.

all this just to say, we're still around, but our attention has been diverted. hopefully not for much longer.

Top 10 Records of 2008

1. M.I.A. - "Paper Planes [Single]" (XL)
   
2. The Dodos - Visiter (Frenchkiss)
   
3. The Terrordactyls - The Terrordactyls (Pankof)
   
4. TV On The Radio (Dear Science)
   
5. The Cool Kids - Bake Sale (Chocolate Industries)
   
6. Flying Lotus - Los Angeles (Warp)
   
7. She & Him - Volume One (Merge)
   
8. MGMT - Oracular Spectacular (Red Ink)
   
9. Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend (XL)
   
10. The Bug - London Zoo (Ninja Tune)
    

More here ...

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 ...

Top 6 The Only Movies I saw in 2007

Which roughly translates to movies playing at the Parkway/Cerrito theatres during Baby Brigade night.

• Pan's Labyrinth
• Knocked Up
• Death at a Funeral
• The Darjeeling Limited
• Dan in Real Life
• Beowulf

Top10RecordsNotActuallyReleasedThisYear

Much of the music I ended up really digging this year wasn't actually put out in 2007. In fact, my 2007 list seems a bit underwhelming in terms of my relative enjoyment of the music. So this is really the list closest to my heart ...

10. Darc Mind - Symptomatic of a Greater Ill [Anticon] (1997/2006)
The lost hiphop album from 1997, this record finally saw the light of day in late 2006, thanks to the kind folks at Anticon. Dense and brooding, rich and intelligent in that mid 90s NYC kinda way. This is everything that I miss about hiphop.

9. Prince Rakeem - Ooh, I Love You Rakeem [12" Single - Tommy Boy] (1991)
Pre Wu-Tang era RZA kicking it, back in the halcyon days of hiphop. An insanely catchy riff (that sounds scarily like "Summer Nights" from Grease) with charming lines like "I've got too many ladies \ I just gotta learn to say no" - yes indeed - we love you Rakeem.

8. The Left Banke - I've Got Something On My Mind [12" Single - World United Studios] (1967)
I ran into this song via a sample in Jens Lekman's "Black Cab". One way to discover great music is to shamelessly track everything Jens Lekman has ever sampled. The man's taste is impeccable. This is a forgotten British invasion band (probably because they were actually from New York), doing a lesser known single (they are best known for "Walk Away Renee") - glorious pop in all its baroque sixties flavor.

7. Dirty On Purpose - Hallelujah Sirens [North Street] (2006)
Beautiful droney shoegazer indie-rock. I will always remember this record (and specifically the song "Your Summer Dress") as the soundtrack to the day Satya was born. It provided me with hope and confidence and meaning for everything that was to come.

6. Various Artists - Colours Are Brighter [Rough Trade] (2006)
This is what you get when indie musicians start breeding. Rough Trade released this compilation CD of kid's music featuring the likes of Belle and Sebastian, Fourtet and The Flaming Lips. This was designed specifically with a certain brand of hipster parent in mind - the kind that is trying to maintain their last remaining shred of indie cred, now that the days of drunken punk shows and 3am techno and dirty toilet sex are a distant memory. Or for people who never actually experienced any of those things, and used music as a substitute for their lack of a sex life. ANYWAY - this comp is good, clean fun with plenty of weird and a very strong cast of musicians. Also, your kid can now claim that the first record they ever listened to was something on Rough Trade.

5. Huun Huur Tu - The Orphans Lament [Shanachie] (1994)
Tuvan throat singing is fucking genius. And these guys are the best in the biz. We used this record and the low baritones of the kargyraa to soothe Satya in the early days. She still seems to have a special affection for deep rumbling noises. I'm so proud!

4. Mathematicians - Level Two [S/R] (2006)
This album is crazy and all over the place. The only coherent theme between the songs is math. Songs range from angular post-punk to synthy rap to soulful R&B. And yet every single song is good. And super dorky. "We'll be just fine \ when the number is prime" - Hell Yeah!

3. The Mountain Goats - Tallahassee [4AD] (2002)
John Darnielle gives up his low-fi DIY ethos for a more full blown studio sound in this concept album. While some may argue that his newer work borders on saccharine and over-produced, this, right here, is perfection. Just enough production to really bring out the music, but still raw and earnest in keeping with his earlier stuff.

2. Jose Gonzalez - Veneer [Hidden Agenda] (2005)
We keep rocking gently on this list, thanks to Swedish boy#2. Lovely syncopated guitars, an angsty yet soothing voice, and a fantastic cover of "Heartbeats" (originally done by fellow Swedes, the Knife). Funny thing is JG seems to be at his best when he does acoustic covers of electronic music - maybe he should do an entire album devoted to this genre.

1. Jens Lekman - Oh You're So Silent Jens [Secretly Canadian] (2005)
We have a Swedish meatball sandwich here at the top of the list. Ok - more like a Swedish veggie-meatball sandwich. Anyway - we played this album over and over and over again all year long. And then we played it some more. And yet, it never got old. Jens Lekman also has fantastic taste, and liberally samples the music he loves. You can definitely hear him channeling the Magnetic Fields throughout the album, but he also has plenty of other, more obscure influences (See #8). This is the kind of album you play while falling in love. And since this year has been all about falling in love with our little tinyness, this pretty much had to be the album of the year.

listmania

Instead of simple list format, I will actually include a mini-commentary for my end of the year lists this time around.

Here we go ...

17 months

Why do so many parents insist on giving out their children's ages in months? It always creates this dissonant pause in my head, while I quickly try to extract a remainder from the ensuing mental long division (in base 12 no less). See - it took you a while just to parse that sentence! That is what "Oh - she'll be 17 months in 2 weeks" does to me. They have units for a reason, people. Seriously, what is so hard about saying 1 year and 5 months? Gads ...

it's no rushmore, but ...

the darjeeling limited is still an entertaining movie. a little disjointed, and a little euro-centric in its depiction of india, perhaps, but still worth a dekho as they say in the desh.

i was a little confused by the signature track (where do you go to my lovely - peter sarstedt), but i just discovered that mr. sarstedt was born in india, as were his two brothers, and suddenly it makes perfect sense.

in the mail

my new toy

WTF?

Umm - why have I had the pantsless leprechaun story headlining my blog for so long?

In other news, I'm back from Chile.

Leprechaun Opens Car Door for Pantsless Man

On BoingBoing:

Posted by David Pescovitz, October 17, 2007 4:01 PM | permalink

This gentleman, Kim Leblanc, was arrested in Cincinnati, Ohio on Tuesday morning sitting in someone else's car and not wearing any pants. According to an article on WLWT.com, Leblanc told police that "he had done drugs and believed that a leprechaun had let him into the car." [Link]




... and some featured comments ...
Comment #4
All right, sir. A leprechaun led you here."
"Yes, officer. That's correct. A leprechaun!"
"Okay, sir, now what about the pants?"
"The pants?"
"You're not wearing any pants."
"CURSE YOU MAGICAL IRISH BASTARD!!!"

Comment #12
I appreciate the guy's honesty. "Listen, officer. I was tripping balls and this leprechaun told me to drop trou and get in the car. What the hell was I supposed to do? Say NO!??"

configure; make

i've been hearting technology lately.

i just discovered google's street level 3d view. holy crap - it is pretty fantastic. some scary ramifications w.r.t. the whole surveillance society thing, but it makes for a pretty nice navigation tool.

yay for subversion!

trying to scrobble my xmms playlists to last.fm has been a pain in the ass. and building the regular last.fm player has been an adventure in dependency hell. i think i finally have something working though. oh - wait no ... i hate linux. wait - i didn't mean that. linux is awesome. linux is like sliced bread. like butter. like butter on sliced bread. like ... forget it.

the real issue is that my playlists seem to get pushed out, but then end up somewhere in the void. the idea of the internet void is an interesting one - a place where forgotten bits end up. packets without a recipient. the informational equivalent of the dryer sock fairy. or entropy. hmm - should explore that idea sometime.

new radiohead - drm free, sliding scale and completely downloadable. this is the future. it is really special that the biggest band in the world is offering up a great big fuck you to the riaa. nice.

update:
i almost missed the nextbus (hurrr for the pun). yes - this is truly the way to ride. now i know exactly when to time my mad sprint for the bus stop to minimize rain soakage. what's YOUR bus?

Less Than Zero

I must have gotten on a list somewhere, because I've now been part of two telephonic polls in the span of a week. The first one was survey on radio listening habits. The other one was a political survey of some sort, possibly related to MoveOn. In both polls I got to hand out zeroes - a zero for a certain new-country selection that made me want to rip my ears out, and a zero for one Mr. Bush that makes me want to rip out every other part of my body.

Speaking of opinion polls. It seems that these have effectively replaced the actual electoral process when big decisions get made by big people in between elections i.e. the other 363 days of the year. This makes its one's duty to take as many surveys and opinion polls as possible, since opinion polls seem to carry just as much weight as actual elections these days. Gotta represent!

got_it

must. eat. camera.
Originally uploaded by shreddd

Kiddoes are unpredictable. One week it seems like they just fit into everything that you want to do ... you're eating out, seeing the occasional show, going to parties, yadda yadda yadda (My first yadda yadda yadda in writing btw). And then suddenly they are fussy and needy and catch colds, and even watching an hour of TV becomes impossible (or something you have to break down into 10 minute increments). Such is the life. She is pretty damn cute though.

twittering

I am playing with Twitter in an attempt to completely sell out to the Web 2.0 revolution. You can now follow my every single mundane micro moment (now conveniently located right *here*) as I twitter my way towards post-humanism. Once the web becomes sentient, my persona will exist into eternity. Whoa!

ugh

yesterday was a really crap morning. we were already spooked about having to take the babezorz in for a kidney test and didn't sleep much the previous night. then, on our way out the door to the hospital, i tripped over the stairs - HARD. as in badly twisted my ankle, rolled over twice and bumped my head hard. as in, passed out in pain while trying to get back in the house (and bumping my head again) hard.

which meant that poor e had to take the baby in by herself for the test. which meant that she had to try and console a 5 month old as they poked at her with an iv for half an hour. watching a strapped down, screaming infant will pretty much break your heart. e - i am so incredibly sorry that you had to go through that, and that i wasn't able to make it.

and now we have to deal with the very real possibility of surgery in the coming months. like i said - not a good morning.

os x-pert

so i'm getting a little better at moving around and manipulating things on the new macbook. adding a three button mouse was a life saver - i can right click again!

seriously though - i'm still looking for tips to create a more zen like state of flow in my computering. any specific tools / applications / hints are very welcome ...

nostalgia

I'm writing this from my brand new MacBook Pro. It is very very sexy. Everything seems prettier on a Mac. Things just work. Magic seems to happen every time I push a button. Ah - the allure of design ...

And yet - I know, this will sound absurd but - I miss Linux.

As nice as the new BSD based Apples are, something feels a little odd and klunky when you try to operate from the command line. Aqua is totally awesome, but it was never meant to (with good reason) interface with the shell. I guess Linux makes me feel more godlike, while the Apple makes me feel more like a spectator. Still enjoying though ...

jens + left banke

jens lekman does this great song called "black cab", where he samples the left banke's "i've got something on my mind" - also a brilliant number. both artistes are definitely worth checking out. the left banke is probably one of the most underrated bands from the 60s, and jens lekman is basically e's new swedish husband, in a manner of speaking. i had to share.

daydream nation

wow - somehow, surreptitiously, mysteriously my social life has crept up on me. as in, i suddenly have one. in the course of the past 10 days, we've ended up going to a movie, hanging out and drinking with peeps in cafe/bar like situations (twice), doing trivia night and finally going to a sonic youth show.

s.y. show was our first non-baby social experience ever, which was both terrifying and liberating.

speaking of trivia - did you realize that hyphy doesn't have any of the standard vowels (a-e-i-o-u)? weird!

diesel sweeties vs. the riaa

we were so hype. or was it fly??!!!

• slightly askance trucker hat - check
  
• fanny pack - check
  
• wispy stache - check
• moppy hair - check
  
• disaffected stare - check

not sure if this was five years behind the times, or fifteen years ahead.
if only i hadn't tucked that shirt in ...

yes - that is indeed me!
"back in the days when i was a teenager /
before i had status and before i had a pager"

Trying Not to Sweat the Details

Since when did I become such a pedant? Why, not so long ago, I was talking about wanting to lead a less regimented, more organic existence [see old slackers site, 2003.03.19 entry ... hmm - i guess that was a while ago]. These days I seem obsessed with internal consistency, to the point of, well, pedantry. I almost sound like the spelling bee kid sometimes:



Mmm ... my first YouTube link. I am now officially entrenched in Blogosphere 2.0.

Can I just say this again?

I really don't like The White Stripes.

Bike2Work

Well - after years of agonizing, I finally rode my bike to work.

While I'm super excited about the personal and environmental benefits of this choice, it brought to light some interesting societal divisions among bicyclists. On the one hand you have your gear heads (we'll just call them hedz, shamelessly borrowing from RPM culture). The hedz are your hardcore bike nuts - they will often own several bikes (where several can span double digits), will pretty much *only* ride in spandex, and have several miscellaneous bike parts just floating around their garage to fuel what is now an obsession that easily costs them a few thousand dollars a year. Oh - and they're predominantly male. To these people I say, more power to you. Why, some of my best friends are ... ok - forget it. I will almost certainly never be one of them. There are things I get obsessive about - bike gear is just not one of them.

Which places me in the other camp. Utilitarian commuters that understand the ecological and economic benefits of riding, along with the loads of sexy indie cred it carries. Not sure if I've mentioned this before, but I've always found hipsters on bicycles terribly attractive. So yes - I'm riding to boost my cred. This is actually not dissimilar to vegetarianism - it just felt like a good idea on a number of different levels, even if there was a girl involved in the initiation.

Gossip

So apparently, The Arcade Fire stole this guy's basketball.

No wait ... they didn't.

Such is the blogosphere.

kiddie cred

you know the hipsters are breeding when rough trade puts out a kid's record.

and yes - satya has a copy (thanks shal) - duh!

Managed to get out to Club 6 last night to check out Badawi. Dark freaked-out dubby stuff - quite nice. This was my second show post-Satya. Caught up with some folks at the show, showed sissy around the "scene" (whatever that even means these days), lost my voice trying to talk over the music, and heard an Egyptified version of Walk Like an Egyptian. Overall - a good time.

We are overflowing with stuff in the house. If there is anything that you want to take off my hands, let me know. It doesn't even matter what that something is. We desperately need to purge - At this point I'm perfectly happy giving away stuff we may not even possess.

Satya owns two monkeys now - We've named them Fibonacci and Roadkill. She appears to like teh monkey brainzzz.

Oaklandish

Baron Davis is a G.O.D.! Did anyone see the Warriors last night? Ohmigod they pummeled the Jazz. Firebombed them, even. And that dunk ... mmm mmm ... that DUNK!

I have never seen a team having this much fun playing ball. They had no business even being here. These are the Golden State Warriors, fer chrissakes. They haven't been to the playoffs in 12 years. Eliz didn't realize that Oaktown even had an NBA team until now. But yes - these same Warriors are playing with a fuck-you attitude and swagger. Don Nelson doing interviews with a can of beer. B. Davis and Stephen Jax acting like the baddest mo fos in the world. And the beard! This is how we do it, Oakland style.

funny thing - this has never happened to me

Why is it that I have never woken up in the morning thinking, "I am a shadow dancer"?

Here's the Question ...

would you rather be an uncle-chod or a potato-fucker?

daily dump

I just realized that this blog thing is more rewarding when I'm updating regularly. The idea being that the more I write, the more I will have to say. Even if I don't have anything to say.

Speaking of which (not really, but it was a convenient segue), Google now lets you blog in हिंदी। If the Hindi text does not render properly on your machine, you may need to turn on multilingual support, as described here. For some reason, the default rendering messes up the little ई मात्रा, and does strange things with compound letters. If you cannot read Hindi, then just admire the roundy-ness of the letters.

Speaking of which - and this time we actually have a sequitur - I have this weird recurring nightmare where I find myself having to take a Hindi test the next day (or sometimes a Gujarati test, in a variant of the same dream) and I cannot seem to remember anything other than a few basic words. My life somehow depends on this test, but I can never find the right words for anything. I've actually been having this dream for years now, and is the closest thing I have to a recurring nightmare. And yes, my hindi has probably deteriorated to the point where I have a pretty hard time not reverting to English semi-regularly. For example, I cannot remember the word for "baby". Looks like someone will be joining Satya in her Sunday Hindi school lessons. Gads - then I might actually have to take a Hindi test. Noooooo .....

no cat no cradle

When the last living thing

has died on account of us,

how poetical it would be

if Earth could say,

in a voice floating up

perhaps

from the floor

of the Grand Canyon,

“It is done.”

People did not like it here.

Kurt Vonnegut - you will be missed. Dearly missed.

Flashback

Six months ago I was in Austin, TX. I rented a little red Chevy Aveo, which pretty much screams cheap-o economy rental. I peeled out of the parking lot and drove down the drag, windows rolled down, volume cranked up to 11, with the radio blasting: "You are tuned into Fresh Air with Terry Gross on NPR".

Stephen Elliott

I read this little piece in last month's Believer and it made me cry. And it made me happy to think that beauty is alive and well.

http://www.believermag.com/issues/200703/?read=article_elliott

My Friend

My friend is very nice. He comes over and does the dishes for us sometimes. He has brown hair. My friend has two cars that don't run. I am glad that my friend is not a brain surgeon. My friend is very good at many things like bicycles and dogs. My friend has a very nice girlfriend. He writes songs about his girlfriend. He also writes songs about me, like the Shrey Doggie song and the N. Shrey Dawg song. I like my friend very much. My friend is 34 years old.

Written by Shreyas D., age 30

cell division

At the risk of turning this into a running baby blog, which has never been my intention, I have to say this - we reached a significant milestone yesterday. Satya outgrew her newborn diapers. This means that she is probably growing.

Alive

Satya just slept through the night for the first time. That was my first contiguous 6 hour block of sleep in 37 days. Yippee!

If I had one of those tardoid mood icons, a la livejournal, it would say: "Current Mood: Awake"!!

Food, Sex or Cars

Ok - not really, but the old SNL skit, did some pretty funny stuff with Hobson-esque choice, where each alternative is equally attractive (or unattractive). My version from last night:
- Guinness, Gordon Biersch Pilsner or low-fat organic yogurt.

We also used to play this idiotic game in college that went along the same lines, but with a "who would you rather bang?" bent. It was mad fun. For example, who would you rather bang: Arnold Schwarzenegger or Jesse Ventura?

I'll occasionally bring this feature back, as I think of better examples.

TV Funhouse

One of the perks of early babyhood (the catch-all term for the baby experience from the perspective of all concerned parties) is the amount of unstructured free time you must spend at home. Don't get me wrong - there is a lot of work involved (diaper changes, feedings, keeping everything else in the household at least minimally functional), but there is also a lot of down time, given that babies tend to sleep for around 16 hours a day. This is the perfect excuse to catch up on all the useless pop culture that you've missed out on in the past several years since you've sworn off television. And Netflix makes this available to you in convenient, easy-to-digest chunks. In glorious Technicolor*. Commercial free. Without the annoying inter-episode cliffhangers that leave you irritated and unsatisfied for weeks, possibly months. TV on DVD, here I come! Now watching:

• Lost - Season 1
  
• Dr. Who (The new BBC series) - Season 1
  
• The L-Word - Season 3
  
• City of Men
  
• The Office - Season 2
  
• The Office (BBC) - Series 2
  

*Why do people still use the term "Technicolor"? What does it even mean?**
**Yes - I could look it up in Wikipedia, but that's not the point, is it?

your moment of zen

demographics

In about 4 hours, I will be 30 years old. Approximately 68 hours ago, I became a dadzorz. Somehow I don't feel old or anything. The hype around 30 is overrated. In my mind, 34 is a far more significant milestone. That is when I will no longer be a part of that crucial 18-34 demographic, that the media and marketing folks adore. Four years from now is when I'm going to be truly freaking out.

satya marjane

we'll be uploading more pics on flickr

thanks to everyone for the wishes. we're all doing fantastic!

-satya, elizabeth and shreyas

2cm and counting

2cm this past Thursday. Contractions started coming and going this weekend. And still we wait. I realize that this part is slow, and could last for days. I want to meet our baby, but it is probably best to wait. Allow it to get a little bigger. I promise there will be pictures when the time comes.

now reading

Not that you really wanted to know, but I like keeping these little notes, so that I can look back and nostalgificate.

• The Schematics of Computation - Vincent Manis, James Little. Oddly enough, this seems to be fulfilling my light, recreational reading quota. I'm trying to rediscover Scheme and functional programming, from a more advanced and mature, post-CS degree perspective.
  
• The Shuttered Room - H.P.Lovecraft. This is currently my bathroom reading. It is kinda fun to get all turn of the century spooky, while in the loo.
  
• The Birth Partner - Penny Simpkin. This is what I spend every free moment absorbing, in, what is bound to be, a valiant but essentially impossible attempt to be "prepared" for childbirth.
  

hrrrrrr

Seriously, how has Tuvan throat singing not become the rage among all the indie kids. This stuff is fantastic, bizarre and just plain brilliant. Check out Huun Huur Tu or Chrigilchin if you get a chance [Link]