Nothing funny about feldspar

Moving house

2005-07-25T20:11:00.000-04:00

Well, I've signed a lease for an off-campus apartment, so that means I have to move out of the Blogger™ dorm. Why don't you visit me at the new digs?

I'll be keeping some things here at the old place for a while though, until I decide whether to move them into the new place or just toss them away.

Hope to see you soon!

A Judas Priest Fan? Really?

2005-07-22T09:57:00.000-04:00

Veiled Conceit finds some info on Supreme Court Nominee John G. Roberts.

They Might Be Giants vs. Flash Animators

2005-07-22T09:39:00.000-04:00

The Fingertips Project.

I’m Marcus?!

2005-07-22T09:02:00.000-04:00

Great! Dying of unrequited love.... *sniff*

Food science gone mad

2005-07-18T13:28:00.000-04:00

I thought an apple which tastes like Concord grapes (seen today at the grocery) sounded interesting — until I found out it was a plain ole Fuji apple with artificial grape flavoring added.

In my defense, I thought it was some sort of exotic fruit with a new label, like kiwifruit.

Borrowing trouble?

2005-07-15T08:51:00.000-04:00

Plugging the camera into the USB port, I thought about Plagioclase’s mother. She has terrible arthritis in her hands, and doesn’t have fine motor control anymore — she finds it difficult to push the buttons on the phone, for example.

She was a secretary for many years, and typed on an manual typewriter (she said she never really got the hang of the Selectric).

I thought about the teeny-tiny connector that goes into the camera, and realized that she would never be able to make it go. And then I became a little concerned when I realized that *my* fingers are aching a little this morning.

Keyboard usage >> Arthritic fingers >> Unable to manipulate keyboard

What am I going to do after 50 years of typing for hours every day?

Feed the blog, or feed the blogger?

2005-07-14T23:45:00.000-04:00

I’ve been thinking about blogs, blogrolls and RSS (or Atom) feeds. Recently, I changed over Nfaf’s blogroll because it had gotten crufty and because Bill and Son1 challenged me to. Well, not directly. But you know, I took it that way.

Anyway, I realized that I seldom read blogs in their native form. A few I do: the ones that don’t send the pictures along with their feeds, or the ones who refuse to send the whole text of the post (or refuse to do it even on the main page — Language Log, I’m lookin’ at you!). The rest, though, I usually see only in Safari (or Firefox/Sage, depending on my mood).

And so I don’t usually see bloggers’ sidebars — not their “About me!” statements, not their blogrolls, not their Flickr photo-streams, not their Google AdSense ads, not their Amazon Wishlists, and not their PayPal Donate! buttons. I also don’t have to wait for JavaScript, music or graphics to finish downloading.

And I am sooo glad for that.

But if we’re all just reading through syndication, what’s the point of the shilling and excessive bandwidth usage? Why are blogs becoming ever more graphics-intensive — have you looked at some of the WordPress themes? — when people are more likely to only see your text without all of the styles you so carefully designed?

I really do believe that “we’re all reading RSS” — hell, the BBC has feeds for everything for its news site (and gives you permission to rebroadcast it). I am well-known as an early enthusiast but late adopter of technologies — I’m the one who says, “This sounds cool! You try it!” — so if I’m using RSS, then lots of people are.

Is syndication going to be the technology that makes the internet seem less, well, commercial? I doubt it. I’ve already read the term Tagspam to describe the misuse of Technorati tags to promote items unrelated to the subject. No doubt someone will figure a way to get the non-post material into the post so us “eyeballs” can see ’em.

Makes me feel kind of sorry for the folks who don’t use a browser with ad-blocking.

Update: I've just run across an alpha version of a WordPress plugin to automatically include AdSense to your feed. Created by the lead developer of WordPress. Sheesh.

Something I’d like to experience

2005-07-14T20:29:00.000-04:00

Barbara Rosenblat reading The Vorkosigan Saga

Forget the words. Here are pictures!

2005-07-12T09:57:00.000-04:00

Closeup of Centauria macrocephala flower.

A small stand of bergamot (bee balm).

Close up of an Œnothera (evening primrose) flower. It opens at dark.

Echinacea (coneflower) with friend.

Gardens vs. Gardening

2005-07-11T17:23:00.000-04:00

We have only a couple of obsessions here at the Rock Pile, and having a garden is one of them. But as I mentioned earlier, we’re generally not diligent about it. Plagioclase and I love gardens, not gardening. We like interesting plants, native flowers, smelly roses — anything tolerant of a bit of neglect.

I love seeing flowers blooming, and there are some weeds I can do without (burdock and mint being my current banes), but I don’t get out every day and pull weeds out of the flowerbeds — I usually wait until they’re tall enough to be seen to be weeds¹. Our neighbor, on the other hand, is out there every day, arms akimbo, trying to intimidate non-wanted plants into shriveling up.

And every summer she’s watering and weeding and fertilizing and pruning and deadheading…. and we sit and watch her over the crowded blooms in our yard and wonder who has the healthier plants and the more enjoyable vista. After all, we are usually just darned happy that the daylilies and the echinacea and the bergamot and the centauria macrocephala decided to return with little effort on our parts, and we know we didn’t have to do much more than pull a few thistles out before they set seed.

Which, of course, drives P.’s mother crazy. She’s more like our neighbor, often telling us that she “was always taught to…” do something that sounds like makework, in that “I’m invoking external authority here, so it must be right” kind of way. But as her precious plants have been plucked from the brink of certain death², she’s learning that sometimes what she learned by gardening in her brick-like soil doesn’t apply in the near-perfect sandy loam of our yard.

That, and she’s learning to just enjoy sitting and watching our neighbor work… We’ll get her trained to our way yet!

¹ I learned to do this by having pulled out many many “good” plants thinking they were “bad” ones.

² By our moving her garden en masse from her old house to our house. The new owners (of her old house) told us they planned to raze the whole lot.

There’s Soy at the end of that rainbow

2005-07-08T17:03:00.000-04:00

Could someone explain this market concept to me?

Listened to an ag-ad for soy biodiesel. The refrain was: “Using soy biodiesel [to farm soy] increases the demand for soy, and helps your profits.”

How could that be? I mean, the farmer raises soy, sells it to a distributor, who sells it to a biodiesel producer, who sells it to the farmer. Wouldn’t increased demand raise the cost of the fuel without raising the farmer’s income from the soy? Soy’s a commodity, so the price probably won’t be affected by an increased demand from say 30 million bushels of soy (equivalent to 30 million gallons of fuel) in a market that produces 2.5 billion bushels annually (that’s just the US in 2002/2003), unless it gets to be incredibly popular.

Farmers aren’t dumb, but perhaps the Ohio Soybean Council is a bit optimisitic?

Food thoughts

2005-07-07T18:02:00.000-04:00

I’ve been thinking about food a lot lately, and I’m not sure why. There was an article recently in the New York Times about chefs and the foods they refuse to serve, and someone commented to me today that my father’s conversation (when he deigns to speak) is invariably about food — what he ate and why it was terrible, why isn’t he being fed, don’t forget the snacks.

But while these occurences provide an occasion, they don’t provide the reason for this blog entry. Though who said I need a reason?

I’ve been thinking about tradition; about the time we had barbequed ribs for Easter dinner and tried to convince our Irish guest that it was a tradition in “this part of the country” to do so.

And about preference; about how Plagioclase’s mother and I disagree on what “cooked” means. She prefers everything she eats to be “well-done” — beef, chicken, vegetables, potatoes, salad…. and so sometimes I’ll make or order something to be “rare-rare” just to see if she’ll get that queasy look (soft-boiled eggs are a good bet).

And about snobbery; about how I’m afraid to admit to my foodie friends that I really like boxed mac-and-cheese, and powdered iced tea. No, it’s not the same as home-made (well, as home-made as dried pasta and fancy cheese bought from the deli can be), and it’s not “just as good,” but I like the way it tastes. And after you realize that you overcooked the pudding again and wonder why didn’t you just get the pre-made stuff, since it’s consistent and tastes just fine, and everyone prefers it anyway because it has market-focus-group approval, you’ll learn that it’s ok if you buy some things at the store.

But not the rotisserie chicken. Too salty.

YARR (Yet Another Radio Rant)

2005-07-06T15:13:00.000-04:00

I came to a realization today about why the radio stations in northwest and central Ohio play old music. Not Oldies, but stuff I grew up with — “Classic” rock that was wrinkled when I was a teen. It’s because all the cool kids have iPods (or another self-made-radio-station) that lets them listen to their music without all of the ads.

Us old farts who can’t be bothered to load up the iPod are stuck listening to the radio, and the programmers figure if we’re not listening to Country or Christian, then we must want to hear The Rolling Stones because we haven’t heard them in a while (like within the last 20 mintues).

And some of the stations’ promotional ads are (unintentionally?) hilarious. One was bragging that they play the best of Classic Rock as well as New Rock. Except the snippet of music underlying the “New Rock” statement was Stone Temple Pilots from 1995. Guess those ol’ rockers have a definition of “New” different from mine.

Then there’s the one that says it is “Your New Rock Alternative.” What the hell is that supposed to mean?

Traditions can be painful

2005-07-03T18:56:00.000-04:00

Long holiday weekends mean garden work here at the Rock Pile. We have a tradition of not doing a damn thing outside until Memorial Day, then we pull weeds and plant beds and we wake up sore. Then nothing until July 4th, when we pull weeds and plant beds until the call of beer is stronger than the call of plants. Then we eat a cooked-out dinner, drink a few beers, and then rest on our laurels until Labor Day.

This year, we garden, drink, blog, and eat. Happy Independence Day!

Where’s my burger?

Hilliard Humbug

2005-06-30T17:44:00.000-04:00

Driving along a city street, I saw a couple of men in reflective vests marking some line along the road. One was spraying paint lines; the other was using two (metal) sticks in the traditional dowsing style.

Was it for real? Or was the road crew just messing with us?

Is that what he said?

2005-06-29T09:59:00.000-04:00

Mac paraphrases the President’s speech.

I don’t mind fighting the terrorists in Iraq and letting them blow up Iraqi men, women, and children that America saved from Saddam Hussein—who is a very bad man, by the way—as long as you bitches get to continue to enjoy eating Wonder Bread and watch the reality shows.

Waiting for the ibuprofen to kick in

2005-06-24T10:22:00.000-04:00

I went for a long walk yesterday, about an hour-and-a-half jaunt at the Metro Park. There’s a 1/2-mile loop in the woods with lots of bugs, and a long meandering meadow trail that connects two sections of park that are about 3 miles apart. I did the loop first, and then decided to walk the meadow trail to the point where it meets the second road (it crosses two).

I didn’t make it to my destination, because I realized that although I had my cell phone with me, there was no one available to come pick me up. So I wisely turned around about a quarter-mile short of my goal and made it back to the car with a minimum of discomfort. A bit sweaty, but no aches or blisters.

But this morning, oh, this morning….

Ohioans are weird.

2005-06-20T06:20:00.000-04:00

Speaking of NASCAR, Plagioclase & I had an interesting experience yesterday evening travelling home from my mother's. We were on I-75 south of Bowling Green, and saw cars full of people sitting in the fields by the side of the road. P. was certain that there was something going on in the air (balloons? air show?), until he realized that there were cars on both sides of the freeway pointed so the people were looking at the freeway.

And then we started seeing them. Jack Daniels. Interstate Batteries. Fedex*Kinkos. The tractor-trailers that haul the cars and gear for the NASCAR teams were heading south away from the recently-completed race at the Michigan International Speedway. The UK has trainspotters; Ohio has NASCAR spotters. Who'da thunk it?

Late to the indignation party

2005-06-18T22:51:00.000-04:00

When I was a kid, I used to follow auto racing. Round track, not road racing (prettyboys — ptui). Even did a little myself when I was a kid (not quite this young). I pay some attention to NASCAR now, since my mom follows it, but you couldn’t call me a fan. Nothing with the Indy cars, midgets, local stock cars or sprints.

So I’m kind of late with this whole Danica Patrick thing that happened in May. And I wonder what was the point of all the brouhaha? It sure sounds like some people were surprised (and others were pissed) she did so well(ish) at the Indy 500. Why should her plumbing make a difference to her racing abilities?

Men and women are different. Physically, mentally, emotionally, and socially. But that doesn’t mean they can’t be successful in the same arenas. All that’s required of a race car driver at this level is good driving skill, reasonable ability to communicate with the crew, press and sponsors, and helpful contacts. Good rides are hard to find, and harder to keep. Team Rahal obviously feel that Patrick meets their requirements, who are we to second-guess them?

For archival use only

2005-06-18T18:01:00.000-04:00

This is Nothing funny about feldspar’s blog roll until today. You’ll notice some have gone from the sidebar, and some remain, with a few new ones. There’s no particular method or reason for the changes — it’s pixels and text, after all, and as such are cheap enough to change at the drop of a hat. Not that I wear hats, not often, anyway.

Obviously I’ve remembered how to edit the Blogger template ;)

My sheltered life

2005-06-17T11:19:00.000-04:00

I watch a lot of TV when I’m at my mother’s house — a lot more than when I’m at home, anyway — mainly reruns of Law and Order and DIY porn.

Not self-made sex videos. Home decorating and renovation shows. You know, how during the commercial break, they’ve managed to paint the entire room, and lay down a new floor. Kind of like in porn movies where they jump from saying “hello” to having sex without even flirting. Not exactly like real life (at least, not in my experience).

Or when the designer finishes and shows off a room, they never show the wastebaskets, the remote controls, or the tissue boxes. Not exactly how real people live (again, at least not in my experience).

Perhaps I just haven’t had “normal” experiences?

The Non-Father’s Day Post

2005-06-16T21:24:00.000-04:00

This is my dad, circa 1944. He quit high school shortly after his 17th birthday in February 1944 to join the Navy. He served aboard a sea-going tug in the Aleutian Islands.

He never talked much about his service, just a few tidbits about the year they had two Christmases (one in Russia and one in US waters), or the time he made it back to the ship after shore leave… He is most definitely not one of those veterans who obsess about the service or the war. But we’ve talked about it a bit lately, because I had to find his discharge papers for some of the bureaucratic crap.

So he told me yesterday that he got on the Sarsi somewhat by accident. He’d signed on to an Atlantic ship; happened to be on shore leave in the West when Sarsi needed a mechanic and he wanted a mechanic’s berth. So he became a boilerman (Fireman 2C, according to his papers) and cook’s helper. And gunner.

He also said that a young woman in Philadelphia thought he was going to marry her. He was about 17 at the time, 6' 2" tall, with wavy auburn hair and clear blue eyes. Can you blame her?

30 Days

2005-06-16T14:19:00.000-04:00

Morgan Spurlock (the “Supersize Me” guy) has a small series on FX called 30 Days, which purports to film people living for a month in a fashion opposite to their normal experience. In the first one, Spurlock and his fiancée, Alex Jamieson, move to Columbus, Ohio (my home town) to live on minimum wage jobs.

I saw it, and thought it was ok. The Washington Post says Nickel and Dimed covered the topic better, but hey, this is TV and People Don’t Read. I haven’t read Nickel and Dimed, so I can’t comment.

It was rather predictable. They live in a “hovel” that looks like a converted motel, complete with wonky heat and bugs. They walk or ride the bus to work. They have hard labor-intensive jobs. They can’t afford health care. They argue about money…

But as I think about it more, they made some choices that made their lives easier and harder at the same time.

The first choice was the city (harder). I’m not sure people would move to a strange city, unless there is some reason, such as there are absolutely no jobs available where you are, or you have connections there. Especially one in an area that is not booming. Spurlock mentioned the election, Ohio’s poor cities, and the current economic climate (not great) as reasons for choosing Ohio’s capital. To make this choice better, Spurlock should have either moved to Las Vegas (boomtown) or Beckley WVa (his hometown, where he has connections) to better simulate this choice of the working poor.

The second choice, given this city, is the location (easier). They stayed relatively close to downtown (near-West side, in The Bottoms) with apparently relatively frequent bus service. The Bottoms, by the way, aren’t called that because they’re bad. They’re in the flood plain of the Scioto River — the bottom lands that used to be the most agriculturally fertile after the annual floods.

Many of the working poor in Columbus live in the South end, which was recently noted to have the worst air quality in the city. There, however, busses are hard to come by and minimum wage jobs even harder. And there are no coffee-shops (of the latté variety) within walking distance of the (probably cheaper) housing there. Plus, there you can only get groceries at the local corner mart (at inflated prices), unless you have a way to drive to the Kroger.

Careful choice of the neighborhood will affect your ability generate and live on a small income. But by choosing not to move into a known support system of friends and relations, Spurlock & Jamieson effectively cut off one of the most common ways of the working poor for “getting by.” That, in the end, is what makes this TV show just a TV show and not really a look in what it’s like to be poor, though working, in America.

p.s. They sure got around a lot: German Village (south — signified by Zingerman’s wannabe Katzingers), Clintonville (north — shown early on), Franklin Park (east — the conservatory they didn’t go in), Hilltop (west — where they put back a bottle of water. puh-leeze.) And what’s interesting, they didn’t mention OSU at all, even though The Blue Nile (Alex's birthday dinner) is near to the campus.

Wait wait

2005-06-14T08:09:00.000-04:00

I hate hospital waiting rooms. I’m pretty good at waiting, but it’s still not the most enjoyable way to spend a day. Even here in the nice new Shiny Heart Hospital, with the new furniture and the architecturally interesting atrium, waiting is still a drag.

The Dr requested Mom to be here before 7am. But she’s not even scheduled for the Pre-op setup until 10:30. So we cool our heels and freeze our butts off in this over-air-conditioned paean to Modern Medicine. The only thing keeping me warm is my laptop.

I’ve been passing the time by futzing with a little database; taking something that works just fine, thankyouverymuch, and turning it into a monstrosity of unnecessary functionality. Plagioclase has been doing something similar with one of his pet projects — heaven only knows which one.

In the background is TV. CNN Headline News. Morning news is *sooooo* annoying. I’ve heard the same story about gasoline prices about 55 times since 5am; it’s 9am now.

::time passes::

Now we’re down to cleaning off the desktops, and emptying briefcases of detritus. And it’s only 10.

::more time passes — to the next day::

Wait wait wait wait wait. Mom went finally to pre-op about 12:45, surgery about 2:30, the surgeon talked to us about 3:45 (quick quick!)…. and then wait wait until 7 before we could see her in her room. But we did, and she came thru fine.

Whew.

“Trapped in the Closet”

2005-06-12T16:52:00.000-04:00

If you don’t follow hip-hop, then you may not have heard of this “Urban Operetta” (I also heard it called the “Hip-hopera”) of R. Kelly. This is pop-marketing genius at work.

It’s a work in five parts — the story of an adulterous man’s morning-after, with Kelly singing as the protagonist. So it’s not really “operetta,” since the work is solely from his point of view (and he’s the only one singing), but there is a lot of dialogue…

I heard Part 3 on one of my drives between home and my mother’s a couple of weeks ago. And I was confused. Was it a song about a guy who’s er, dating, a girl and her husband at the same time? I felt like I must have missed the first part of the song, since I was confused about who was Rufus, Chuck and Mary (or is it Kathy?). And who had the gun? And then it stopped, after we learn that a man answered the phone at the protagonist’s home (he was expecting to talk to his wife).

I thought, “Cool! A song with a hook!” And it turns out that Trapped in the Closet is exactly that. Each segment (at least the four I’ve heard so far — more on that later) ends with a cliff-hanger. And then the radio station can run a commercial, have a station break, or go on to other songs, whatever it wants. And since it’s like a 30’s soap opera (as one web reviewer puts it), people stay tuned at least until they figure out the next installment isn’t coming right away.

Kelly released the parts in a dribble, partly to build suspense and get some viral marketing going on, and partly to build up desire for his new album due in July. And the lyric is weird enough (especially Part 3, which is my favorite) that even I, who can’t distinguish between hip-hop and sock-hop, was scanning the hip-hop/R&B stations to try to catch it. So the radio stations must love it, especially when they can say “Listen at 10am Monday when we have an exclusive performance of Part 5!” and know that their advertisers at that time are going to be very happy.

Will the piece “stand the test of time”? I doubt it. It’s a very simple melody, has some rhymes that don’t quite work, and is, after all, the story of an asshole. But for this summer, it’s amusing and catchy. And what more can you ask for a summer tune?