C'est la vie, c'est la mort.
Carpe diem!

525,600 minutes, 525,000 moments so dear
525,600 minutes
How do you measure, measure a year?
In daylights, in sunsets, in midnights, in cups of coffee
In inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife
It’s time now to sing out, though the story never ends
Let's celebrate, remember a year, in the life of friends.
Remember the love! Remember the love! Remember the love!
Measure in love.
- "Seasons of Love", Rent

( Measure in love )

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/524064

What is your interpretation of this ~5m Flash video?

Beyond Passion: The Science of Loving What You Do

Thanks for the link, tenshiemi!

Walked to work this morning.

On my way, stopped at Stumptown for a soy mocha. The only coffee in Seattle I like (from Portland, heh).

There is a beautiful barista there who is the center of my current barista crush (a well-established tradition in which all Seattleites must engage).

This morning she was uncharacteristically cranky. And then I noticed - so were the other 2 girls behind the counter. I smiled to myself, realizing all three girls had swung into cycle and were at their (emotions x 50) PMS peak. It might look like crazy on the outside, but having long experienced PMS woes, I know that it's just a stronger-than-usual amplification of normal emotional reactions. 50 times more irritated, but also 50 times more sentimental. I also know that exposure to caffeine makes it worse, and these girls have their hands in coffee beans and espresso all day long.

Whether consciously or not, the three men in line in front of me were extra gentle with all three women, which kept the women at an even keel of functioning and staying focused on the work. So familiar. It was interesting watching this from outside, knowing from too much experience what it's like to try to hide it from the public when this is happening - I also didn't realize how incredibly transparent it is.

I interacted slowly and quietly with the cashier and my crushee barista, finding that balance between being engaging without interrupting their pace, requiring their focused attention or making them feel impatient (it helped that by then, there was only one customer behind me). When the cashier dropped my change all over the counter, I touched her hand and said, my hands are tiny, it happens all the time. I watched her shoulders visibly relax. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, shoulders down, opened them and smiled. When the barista handed me my cup, we both held our hands there for a moment and let time freeze, I gave her a half-smile, my "yeah, girl, I know this sucks" smile I reserve for such occasions, and watched her shoulders do the same thing.

Afterwards I wondered ... by projecting my own experience on to these girls (this is the primary way in which I attempt to relate to others, which means it fails fundamentally sometimes when people experience things differently from me), did I do just the right thing and indeed perceive a calming effect, or did projecting my negative experience on to them also color my perception of their response? Human interaction. I could spend my life studying it, and still never really understand it.

I read ~40 books in 2009.

Here are the ones I really loved.

Thought-provoking non-fiction

An Anthropologist on Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales - Oliver Sacks (angerie)
Loved this book. An artist who lost his ability to interpret color at age 65 and began experiencing the world as light gradients. Autistic savants. A surgeon with Tourette's. A high-functioning Asperger's woman named Temple that I strongly related to. Temporal lobe epilepsy. The absence of the temporal lobe via brain tumor. Wow.

An Aerial Atlas of Ancient Crete (ok, yeah, I think we can assert this is me-specific)

An Entertainment for Angels: Electricity in the Enlightenment - Patricia Fara
Excellent snapshot of some of the history of electricity in its early years.

Provoking fiction

feed - M.T. Anderson (kfrye)
Brilliant. The More-More-More Acquisition Culture and Marketing Status Quo taken to the ultimate extreme.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society - Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows
This is an amazing book. A very different angle on World War II, and a lot of very authentic human connection ... all begun with a book. Written in Dracula-ish form - all via correspondence between characters.

The Uglies series by Scott Westerfeld (kfrye)
Obsessions with physical symmetry and en-masse obedience taken to the ultimate extremes. Also, post-apocalyptic. w00t!

To Say Nothing of the Dog - Connie Willis
Chaos theory. Time travel. The Victorian era. Cats. This book is AMAZING. I'd recommend it to anyone who likes any kind of fiction, with no caveats.

StoryPeople - Brian Andreas
short-burst, high-impact words and images

The Risen Empire series - Scott Westerfeld
Space opera. Artificial intelligence. Creative, newly imagined tech. If you loved Ringworld or Integral Trees or any of Larry Niven's work without character developer and plot builder Jerry Pournelle, READ THIS.

peeps - Scott Westerfeld (kfrye)
Vampires! As parasites! I love how he weaves science and math into so much of his fiction. He makes science and math sexy.

Fluffy brain candy

Bloody Jack - L.A. Meyer (kfrye)
girl power pirate brain candy!

Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) - Jerome K. Jerome
some great Victoria-era humor.

Oh, look at all these geek cultural references I've been missing! o.0

DragonLance I-III (nplusm)

Tonight is a blue moon.

Is it blue? Nope. It's the second full moon in a single calendar month. Our planet has ducked clear of the path between Sun and Moon twice this December.

They happen about once every 20 years on NYE.

This requires a special celebration above and beyond the New Year celebration, of course.

Do something you wouldn't do accept on a blue moon sometime between now and midnight ;>

Report back.

I was looking at the stripes on a barber shop light from the bus the other day, vaguely remembering how the red stripe has something archaic to do with surgery.

I started wrapping thick straight lines around and realized they would never reconnect on the back side as they were. In my mind, I slid the straight line in a way that allowed it to wrap around the 3d cylinder and connect all the way around.

In what dimension was I sliding that line? "sliding" isn't probably the perfect word. basically instead of just smacking down the 2d object in mass, I was laying down the 2d object one tiny segment at a time and kind of forcing the 2d object boundary's angle to change so I could accomplish the task.

Is there a name for doing something like that?

Probably I need a white board, but I thought I'd ask on the off chance that someone is able to piece together my poorly worded description and voila! answers.

It struck me that there's something interesting that changes between a 2D and a 3D interface - i.e. we can take advantage of the 3D space and dimension to fundamentally change how the 2D object interacts.

He's been wandering Pioneer Square at lunch time for the last three days.

He is dark dark-skinned black, his accent African, his tone soft and polite. His eyes focus in slightly different directions and a long time ago, he had a head injury which is long healed and scarred and set. He and his clothes are clean.

On Monday, I was walking past Elliott Bay Book Co. when he stepped forward from where he was standing, and said, "Excuse me, I am writing poems, are you busy?"

I looked him in the eyes and said, "I am." I kept walking to lunch, but his manner struck me.

On Tuesday, I was walking down Jackson and he stepped forward at Occidental, and said, "Excuse me, ma'am, I am writing poems. I am a Shaman among my people in [country I don't remember]. What is your name?"

I stopped reading and looked at the stack of free postcards in his hands and the poised pen. "What is your name?" I asked him.

"Vladimir."

"Hi, Vladimir. I'm Kim." I shook his hand.

"Can I write you a poem?"

"Not today. But I think I will see you again." I kept walking to lunch, and this time his manner struck me even more. I turned back, and he was walking in the other direction.

Today, I was walking down 1st Ave after lunch and he stepped forward from where he was standing, "Excuse me, ma'am, I am writing poetry."

I was reading, and I looked up into his eyes and smiled. I kept walking.

"Ma'am." He paused. "Ma'am, excuse me."

I kept walking.

At the end of the block, I turned around. He was walking in the other direction.

Does he want money? Are they good poems? Is his name Vladimir today? Does he recognize the people he speaks with everyday? I don't know.

Perhaps next Monday I will see him again and find out.

In Seattle this week only, Artifacts of Consequence:
http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/85816
(saw it last night. wow.)

and a Wall Street Journal conversation with a guy named Cormac McCarthy who wrote a post-apocalyptic book called The Road:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704576204574529703577274572.html

© Jacob Lucas

Know what is enough - abuse nothing.
Know when to stop - harm nothing.
- Lao Tzu (#44, trans. Addiss & Lombardo)

I once gave a talk entitled "The Role of Ignorance in the Creation of a New Species." I'm basically an ignorant person who knows very little, because I don't have a good memory. The good thing, though, is that if you're ignorant, you don't know what cannot be done. All my life - professional life, university life and so on - I always took advantage of that, by not knowing what couldn't be done. That's how I've been able to think outside of the box. Because I am ignorant, I just start by making or designing things.
- Ugo Conti
"A Feel for Engineering: Ugo Conti's Proteus boat reflects a unique instinct for design" by Todd Lappin, O'Reilly's Make magazine, issue no. 19

Hope is as hollow as fear.
Have faith in the way things are.
When you realize there is nothing lacking
The whole world belongs to you.

- Lao Tzu (trans. Stephen Mitchell)

Last night, I met a guy with Othello's "Love Too Well" tattooed in braille on his forearm.

Scott Westerfeld, the famous author of the young adult series Uglies and Midnighters, also wrote a 2 book adult space opera series that I'm in love with. If you liked Ringworld by Larry Niven, I highly recommend The Risen Empire by Scott Westerfeld.

He also insisted on expanding my vocabulary pretty significantly.

ablative the case of nouns and pronouns indicating an agent, instrument of location (... what? context: "The ablative suit was mostly gone now...." I was thinking maybe the heat tiles that fall off on shuttles during re-entry are ablative, but maybe I made that up)

analysand a person undergoing psychoanalysis

celerity archaic or literary swiftness (esp. of a living creature)

colloid substance consisting of ultramicroscopic particles; a mixture of such a substance uniformly dispersed through a second substance, esp. to form a viscous solution; a substance of a homogeneous gelatinous consistency

coruscate give off flashing light; sparkle

corpulent satrap bulky-bodied subordinate ruler or colonial governor

diaspora the dispersion of a people

effulgent radiant; shining brilliantly

egress exit, a way out

insensate without physical sensation, unconscious; without sensibility; stupid

phatic used to convey general sociability rather than to communicate a specific meaning, e.g. "How do you do?"

pointillism a technique of impressionist painting using tiny dots of various pure colors, which become blended in the viewer's eye
    Ex. p. 22 The Killing of Worlds: "The sharp, determinate math of trajectories and wind smelled like camphor, rang in her ears with vibrato-free, pointillistic notes on a handful of flutes, one for each variable."

quotidian daily, of every day; commonplace, trivial

simoom a hot, dry, dust-laden wind blowing at intervals esp. in the Arabian desert

sirocco a Saharan simoom reaching the northern shores of the Mediterranean; a warm rainy wind in Southern Europe

tattoo evening drum or bugle signal recalling soldiers to their quarters; elaboration of this with music and marching, presented as an entertainment; a rhythmic tapping or drumming

vertiginous of or causing vertigo

To Do:
• boloid [ocean]
• lamina cribrosa
• mesopause
• mycoid
• telomere decay
• whisketter

Unless otherwise noted, definitions are from my Illustrated Oxford Dictionary, which I lovingly deface every time I have to look up a new word. :>