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| destroying patterns | ||
Posted 2010-07-20 14:41:32 by
Jim Crawford
Hey, more of me on value systems and the nature of being human. I'm still trying to figure this shit out, alright? If people are patterns, what kind of pattern alteration does it take before you've effectively destroyed the old person and fashioned a new one in his or her place? Is murder distinct from convincing somebody to change their fundamental values? You may or may not have an obvious answer in mind, but no, really, think about it. Not because your obvious answer is wrong, but because it's complicated. . . .
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| the best way to eat beans | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Posted 2010-02-23 23:20:25 by
Jim Crawford
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| ASL | ||||||||||||||||||||||
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Posted 2010-01-20 23:06:20 by
Jim Crawford
Elena pointed out to me one way in which American Sign Language is awesome:
(Elena has a more thorough writeup of this over on her Livejournal.)
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| alan | ||
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Posted 2009-12-07 21:24:58 by
Jim Crawford
Alan died on November 14th. Alan's relationship to me was complicated. He was my mom's boyfriend of 20 years and my half-sister's uncle. That counts as complicated, right? He was a long-time mentor of mine. He taught me to code, how to communicate, how to fucking think. He shaped my life to an incredible degree. But I didn't really consider him a father figure, probably because his relationship with my mom was rocky enough that I didn't feel emotionally close to him. . . .
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| italy | ||
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Posted 2009-08-29 21:51:51 by
Jim Crawford
I went to Italy. Was there for 10 days. Maybe you saw the travelogue on Twitter; if so, you're going to read about a lot of stuff here that you already read about there. I'm going to probably do a more thorough writeup later, but for now you get some general thoughts: . . .
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| flight | ||
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Posted 2009-07-30 22:46:29 by
Jim Crawford
Flew back from a trip to San Diego a few days ago. SFO was fogged in, so the plane detoured to San Jose. After about half an hour on the ground, we took off for a 19-minute flight back to San Francisco. I must be one of the few people in the world who's been on a flight that spent more time taxiing than in the air. Waiting at the baggage carousel, the kid next to me reached out and spun a wheel on some random passing luggage. Sometimes you just have to fiddle with something, you know? Caught the last BART with a couple minutes to spare. I was the last one out at my stop, and BART employees were shutting components down behind me as I left, like when you fly out of a space station just as it explodes.
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| eyes | ||
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Posted 2009-06-30 15:51:16 by
Jim Crawford
So it turns out I've had astigmatism all my life. The optometrist said I “see very well for someone with [my] prescription.” (A funny way of phrasing it, because he was about to give me my first ever optical prescription.) Apparently, aside from the corneal deformation, my eyes are in great shape. It's never been a significant handicap, which is probably why previous optometrists have never deemed it necessary to take action. I've been talking to friends who were old enough at the time to remember when they first tried corrective lenses, and as you might expect, the reaction was uniformly shock that there was this enormous band of information that they hadn't realized they'd been missing out on. I'm not expecting that kind of revelation, but I am looking forward to being able to crank up the resolution on my monitor. And as you may have noticed from the occasional post about goggles, I'm a fan of having awesome eyewear, so I'm looking forward to that too.
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| method acting | ||||||||||||||||
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Posted 2009-05-27 21:52:36 by
Jim Crawford
Working through a list of Star Trek: TNG episodes I compiled out of top ten lists and recommendations from friends, since I feel like I'm geek-culture-deficient in this area. I probably know more Star Trek lore from jokes I've heard than from actual episodes. I'd forgotten forgot how didactic Star Trek is. It's a tossup as to whether I'd've enjoyed it more as a teenager. At this point in my life I already know that time travel might screw up the present and that you should appreciate friends while you still have them and that androids-as-property is slavery, but on the other hand I also have a lot more patience nowadays with being told things I already know.
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| not-porn porn | ||
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Posted 2009-05-11 00:37:50 by
Jim Crawford
There might be an extant word for the concept, but I've been repurposing the word “porn” to describe media that people like for reasons other than that it's good. For instance, somebody might go see a movie simply because it has zombies or gun-kata or Natalie Portman in it. Somebody might listen to music because it has a lot of square waves in it, regardless of whether it's “well-made” or has “artistic value.” So when I say I've been repurposing the word “porn,” I mean I've been using terms like ”zombie porn,” “gun-kata porn,” “square wave porn” and “Natalie Portman porn.” These are a bit misleading, which is one reason I'm looking for a better word. Another reason I'm looking for a better word is that “porn” has negative connotations. Which, full disclosure, is one of the reasons I originally chose it. But lately I've been wondering whether the only difference between the people who like “well-constructed plots” or “interesting character arcs” in their movies, and the people who like zombies in their movies, is their preference in bullet points. Examining the kind of media I personally am snobby about, the consistent pattern I see is that its consumers enjoy it because it has a certain pattern, despite it being otherwise execrable. So while I love a good chip tune (for instance, this incredible 6/8 mixolydian chip rock porn), I'm irritated to see NES-nostalgics fawning over a song just because it happens to have square waves in it, regardless of the quality of the music itself. It's becoming clear to me that my concept of “good” basically consists of patterns that I enjoy without knowing why I enjoy them. Which is not to say that once I've figured a piece out, that I stop enjoying it -- that might be the difference between porn and art. Art, you enjoy without understanding. Porn, you know exactly why you enjoy it. And that's okay! Maybe I'll keep using “porn.” Maybe the word itself could do with some rehabilitation.
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| how to learn | ||
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Posted 2009-04-09 22:55:31 by
Jim Crawford
I've never been able to pick up a new technical skill by sucking down a book; I need a project to provide a concrete and practical impetus to give me a reason to learn. But now that I'm older, the project itself needs to be practical. A toy compiler won't cut it. (Note that for my purposes, entertaining-to-other-people counts as practical, but by contrast, a toy compiler would be entertaining only to myself.) For instance, I'm fascinated by Erlang and I want to learn it, so I've been trying hard to come up with a fun-yet-practical project to build with it. The closest I've been able to come is an OpenGL implementation subset, which fits the tool and would be a lot of fun to make, but fails the practicality test hard; the world so does not need another mediocre software renderer. Still want to learn it. Still racking my brain for an appropriate project. ... maybe it would help if I had a seriously multicore CPU to take advantage of.
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