a thaumaturgical compendium

Been in Chicago. Too busy to blog. Will blog soon. In the meantime, a quiz:

You are a Cyberculture Floozie. The theoretical
aspects of postmodernism interest you only
insofar as they can be used to make cool blinky
things. You probably take psychedelics and
know at least one programming language (HTML
counts!). Other postmodernists call you a
corporate whore. They’re probably just jealous
because you make more money than them.


What kind of postmodernist are you!?
brought to you by Quizilla

This quote from an introduction to a copy of the Hagakure brought to mind blogging:

To speak of Hagakure it is perhaps best to state first what it is not: that is, a well-thought-out philosophy, either in the sense of containing a closely reasoned or logical argument, or in terms of subject matter. On the contrary, it contains an antiintellectual or antischolastic bent through-out, and being a record of a seven-year-span of conversations, the subject matter varies considerably, ranging from the author’s deepest feelings concerning the Way of the Samurai to discussions on the implements of the Tea Ceremony or how a certain mansion acquired its name. The book, moreover, does not seem to have been intended for public reading. In a preface the author advocated that in the end all eleven chapters be thrown into the fire, and he later quotes his father as saying, “After reading books and the like, it is best to burn them or throw them away. It is said that reading books is the work of the Imperial Court, but the work of the House of Nakano is found in military valor, grasping the staff of oak.”

OK, at least my computer is. I had Thermaltake 480W Silent PurePower with Active PFC), the memory (Kingston HyperX), adding a SATA drive (WD Raptor 10K), and a very cheap AGP (Mad Dog Predator MX440), I had gained only minimal stability—and that was only while underclocking the system. After reading a bunch of discussion boards and seeing people RMA the A7N8X Deluxe two and three times, I decided to cut my losses and crossed over to the Abit NF7-S. Tore the thing apart and installed the new board, and I was up and running. It’s quick, and rock stable (knock on wood), and I’ve learned my lesson: look beyond the reviews!

I’ve ended up spending far more on this than I had planned or hoped (both money and time), but it should serve my needs well for a few years. The next updates will be a second, matching, SATA disk so that I can run RAID-0, and eventually a kick up to the 3200+ processor and full three gigs of RAM. For now, though, I am enjoying running matrix processing scripts at about ten times the speed they ran on my old rig. I’m also digging the dual monitors. A guy could get used to this.

I know there must be some aspiring 11th century cartoonists out there. If so, be sure to check out the Historic Tale Construction Kit (via boing). Still bored? Try Globulos (via Jeremy.)

Back from the trip and desperately trying to catch up with all of the end of the semester and end of the year things. Just had a chat with my chair about how I should be tenuring rather than blogging (hi, George), so I figured I would be my normally defiant self and make an utterly unimportant blog entry rather than making progress on my “to do” list.

Three out of my four readers probably know of my disdain for greeting cards, at least those with “messages.” I actually like blank (on the inside) cards, since they reflect the effort of someone trying to say something. When the message itself is mass produced, it is almost always saccharine and inane. Anyway, I make exceptions for Christmas cards (or Winter Solstice, or what have you). I think sending cards around during the end of the year, or the beginning, is a good thing. I especially like the Japanese tradition of New Years cards because—like wedding gifts—they have a built-in deadline extension.

This year we have been too busy to even think about Christmas presents and cards. If I were to have sent cards, they would have been those to the right. The caption reads “A Future Unremembered Poet of the 17th Century Accepts a Christmas Cookie from the Great Veiled Bear.” The original card was sent by Mr. Gorey in 1977, and there were reproductions available at the Gorey Details, but they naturally ran out of them. One of the original run of 450 is up on Ebay now, and at Bromer, but at over $200 at each, I can wait until next year for the reproduction.

When I was a kid, airports were the coolest place in the world. I’ve always loved the idea of carrying your life with you, and the excitement of going somewhere new. I loved the architecture, the systems of moving people and machines. When did all that change?

It started snowing last night and didn’t stop. I should be in a taxi right now headed for my hotel in New York, but instead, I am sitting waiting for the plane to arrive. I should be thrilled to have wireless, happy that Jet Blue has an amazingly pleasant staff, and pleased that Buffalo-Niagara International is relatively comfortable, compared to some airports. But all I can think is how much I’d rather be at home right now. Or on the beach—that would be OK too.

There are a score of professors at UB who make the commute from NYC. It doesn’t sound that bad in the abstract. The flight in only a bit more than an hour, when everything goes just right. But how bad would this be if you faced it throughout the winter?

Update(12/16): It’s not that Jet Blue does anything all that earth shattering—serving drinks at the gate, individual TV screens at the seats, professional staff who are polite because they seem like they want to be and smile like they actually like their jobs, a woman pilot (it seems funny that this is here, but I can’t remember the last time I heard a female voice from the cockpit), a few extra inches of knee room, a sense that design is a part of good service, frequent flights to useful places, and a reasonable and clear pricing scheme. The first question is how they have managed to stay in business, but the real question is how anyone else does.

I’m sure this has been pointed out elsewhere, but in googling some of the folks presenting at the conference, I notice this paper co-authored by one of the presenters: “’Googlearchy’: How a Few Heavily-Linked Sites Dominate Politics Online” (pdf). This is good stuff. I’ve only given it a cursory glance-through, but I already know that it will be on the reading list for my course next semester.

Some of what it is doing (power laws? who’s have guessed?) is well-grounded empirically, but not all that surprising. But they also model this linkage and hyperlink position as an estimate of user behavior, which is often implied, but more rarely discussed, and connect this to the content. This combination of approaches, along with a nice explication of their approach, should make for a good jumping-off point for some of the discussions in the class.