October 31, 2003
Perspective
There's a nice line in Quicksilver: (1OS)
Paris was a city of stone, the color of bone, beautiful and hard--you could dash yourself against it and never leave a mark. It was built, so far as Jack could tell, on the principle that there was nothing you couldn't accomplish if you crowded a few tens of millions of peasants together on the best land in the world and then never stopped raping their brains out for a thousand years. (1OT)
Things have obviously improved a great deal since then but has the model really changed? These days most, or at least many, folk work so the owners can get rich and it's done with such indirection that it's near impossible to point a legitimate finger of accusation. (1OU)
Or if you can't stand such sweeping generalities, watch La Haine for a it-hasn't-changed-that-much view of Paris. And a damn fine movie to boot. (1OV)
October 28, 2003
Familiar Context
Jason says to me: You are all about context. (1O9)
You can infer a lot from context. (1OA)
Here's my brother: (1OB)
As you can see he's about 2 years old. That makes me about 4 months old. This explains a lot. (1OD)
But wait! That's not true®! Truth is we cut my bro's hair back in August, while he was moving stuff out the house and the forces of that moment in time, combined with our creative energies created a something that might be something else. Where's truth? (1OE)
NicksHairContents has some family pictures, a bunch of hair, and maybe some fodder for a very small segment of the pornography industry. (1OF)
October 27, 2003
Seattle Trip Photos
A while ago I went to Seattle to visit my lovely participant and go with her to Mt. Rainier. At that time I promised pictures and stories. Here are the pictures the WikiPiki way, you can provide the stories. (1FR)
SeattleSeptember (1FS)
wikiPiki Pictures
In my last entry I posted some pictures of things going on in the yard. I've since thrown together some code that puts these pictures into the wiki so that I can add some narrative and other people can add some comments. (T7)
I've automated the process of generating thumbnails, middle size images, and creating a series of pages in the wiki, including pages that are primarily used for sources of TransClusion, not for viewing. This makes it easy to suck in a transcluded image, like so: (T8)
A problem with this, though, is that it is also possible to load up a page with a huge number of images. Anyway, it's a first go. Feel free to write some comments in there with the images. I suspect it will be weird at first, but maybe it'll become handy, or maybe I'll throw it out. (TA)
TheYardContents (TB)
October 26, 2003
Being Good
In an effort to satisfy various folks, the cat (PX)
and I went outside for a look around to see if there was any Fall (PZ)
out there. (Q1)
Something for everybody in there. Stan needs to look at the funky cricket. For Mike and the lovely pou these aren't so good of the colors, but may rustle some memories. (Q3)
And Danny, forgive my sin, the cat's in there too. (Q4)
Thanks to my parents for the homes for wrens. (Q5)
October 23, 2003
Welcome Back Deer
Working on those cute points. (PD)
Here we see the deer gazing back at my cat who sits on the porch steps getting fussy because there is a deer in her yard. (PF)
This all happened about ten minutes ago. I had glanced out the door to see a fussy kitty, and thought what's up with that and turned around to spy yonder deer out the window. (PG)
Camera not at hand I slid to the floor out of my chair and shuffled, out of view of the window, along the floor and into the other room (mustn't disturb the deer) where I grabbed the camera. (PH)
When I returned I was able to capture a nice set. (PI)
If I were really gunning for points, I would have taken a picture of the cat too. (PJ)
October 21, 2003
Quicksilver
While reading Quicksilver it occurs to me that it ought to be required reading for InformationScience? programs. Nary a chapter goes by without some sideways reference to the importance and difficulties of information representation. (OX)
Reviews at amazon are at the extremes: some people praise it for its wondeful self indulgent luxury while others rant about the apparent lack of plot. (OY)
I'm willing to forgive the lack of immediate action: the book demonstrates, through interesting tales, whence modern thought comes. (OZ)
That's an accomplishment worth a read. (P0)
(Unfortunately the crucial (as in it's the crux of the biscuit) value of information representation was under represented in my InformationScience? education. I had to plumb it out myself, which tends me towards zealotry.) (P1)
October 16, 2003
I Better Put Something Here
It's clear that, at least in my small segment of the world--that is, the one involving only me--continuous and conscientious blogging is an activity of the unemployed. The fifteen days necessary to clear the front page of this blog went by and I had no idea and nothing to say for it until I stumbled upon the nothingness found here and fell into guilt. (O8)
Working backward, what have I been doing? (O9)
I attended an all day meeting of IndianaUniversity developers to learn about the Open Knowledge Initiative and how it might fit into the IU technology environment. The most exciting moment of that was at the end when a manager type I shall refrain from naming came to visit me and my co-worker and thanked us for participating and said, "I know it can be intimidating for you guys with so many UIS people here." (OA)
Perhaps he meant to be nice, but that was an assy thing to say. The implication, you see, is that people in his department are professionals and I'm not. This is an attitude that's been floating around for quite some time. Perhaps it's justified, but I can probably hit the latrine from further back, while explaining to him why decoupled services on top of well modeled data structures are the most flexible design over the long term. (OB)
In any case, if we want OKI in our KB, we need to rewrite the KB. I wonder if Danny wants some contract work, so we can make the SemanticKb? (OC)
Earlier, I visited with my parents in the lovely confines of Shakamak State Park. They've been going there, often with me, my siblings and another family, for nearly 30 years. There's not much to do there, some few short trails to walk around on, some lakes to look at. Our primary activity is drinking tea and having pleasant conversation. (OD)
Meanwhile, my buddy Stan is caught in some kind of time loop and the erstwhile superheroes in this comic book universe (you know, the kind that can move through time and stuff) have been captured by the female archetype in this arc of the story. We've been doggedly deconstructing the text in search of a way out of this chapter. (OE)
Prior to that I was climbing in the red and apparently having heady, somewhat angelic, experiences with a new drug found at the top of some of the climbs. It's brown and powdery, looks a bit like sand. (OF)
(I'm broken when it comes to taking pictures of myself with my "you can see the picture when you take your own picture" camera. In this view I'm over compensating in response to comments from the lovely poupou, failing miserably, and I won't do that again. At least until the next time.) (OH)
A different Danny had loaned us a huge pile of trad gear, so we availed ourselves of some easy trad climbs, having little to no experience at such things. We aren't dead, so it must have gone well. If you want to buy me a present, I'll have some of these, any size. Thanks very much. (OI)
And now I must end this because I am late for work. (OJ)
October 01, 2003
Dear Deer
Dear Deer, (N6)
Please enjoy the grass. Eat as much as you like, the grass is getting a bit long. (N7)
As cuteness is crucial and bunnies have small mailboxes I've put the entire deer photo shoot up with big versions. (N9)
Which reminds me, I have 200 Seattle pictures to deal with. (NA)
