Adventures in Egotism

I’m taking this blog more autobiographical. Here goes.

Ally and I spent 10 days surrounding Mother’s Day in California. We flew into LAX and stayed with my sister. I got reacquainted with LA’s car culture. We ate sushi. Ally was surprised that the temperature was cool, contrary to the LA portrayed in the liberal media. We hit the LACMA and thoroughly enjoyed the Phantom Sightings: Art after the Chicano Movement exhibit. Time on Ventura Beach. Mother’s Day festivities. It was so good to see my family. Renewal. Oh, and we ate at California Pizza Kitchen. How can it get more California than that?

We rode with Micah up the coast to San Francisco. I got reacquainted with BART. I love the intersection and flow of people. (I had a video link for BART too, but it turns out that it’s on Atlanta’s MARTA, which has the same car design.) The weather in Berkeley was gorgeous, even by Berkeley standards.

We seriously lucked out, as the gorgeousness maintained through our spontaneous camping trip on Angel Island. “spontaneous” as in the product of a serendipitious exchange in which Robert and his rad friends invited us to join them. “rad” both as in “radical politics” and “super fun to camp with”.

Well, I’m not going to try to recount the whole time there. I don’t have links for everything. And I’m not sure how comfortable my friends are with me shouting out to them in a blog. (Oh, though I know Ann Larie is down. We caught up over sushi and the conversation was just getting rolling when we had to part.) Suffice it to say that I was deeply glad to see the people I managed to and wish I had time to visit more. I’ll be back in California in not too long for my next dose. Natural beauty, mass transit, multiculturalism, the intense odor of garlic driving through Gilroy, etc.

The Smiley Award has been getting lots of press. 

Press Release from Friday
CMU noted it Friday and now has it in releases
On the blog of the CS department head
And just now I saw a write-up on Yahoo’s Messenger blog 

I am pleased to be a co-recipient of the Smiley Award.  Because of the history of the Smiley and the goal of the award to highlight "projects that are both useful and fun" I think it’s nicely fitting that the first recipients are from the Art School and the School of Computer Science. Of course, it is primarily an art project and thus Jennifer’s baby.

When Jennifer told me that One Cold Hand was winning the Smiley Award I was really happy, and glad to have been asked to help.  Back in November it just seemed like a cute idea and I thought it would be fun to handle the technical side of things.  Since then, it’s been a long interesting ride.

I remember our giddiness when it hit the New York Times, as an Associated Press article and the hockey stick we saw on Google Analytics.  And the subsequent waning of interest.  And then the occasional peaks as it hit the home page of a big news site in Hungary, or Italy, or Brazil.  I don’t remember them all. 

All along I was happy to see Jenn get her due recognition in the interviews with BBC radio, Pittsburgh television, NPR, CNN, etc.  It was her baby.  To extend a metaphor, I was the ob/gyn who helped bring it into the world.  People take pictures of the baby with the mom, not the ob/gyn.  She’s the one who nurtured it to greatness.

When I suggested she submit One Cold Hand for the Smiley Award, we thought it would be the project that won or lost.  Really, the project has required a battalion of volunteers collecting gloves from boxes and interning with Jenn in her studio.  Not to mention the countless people taking the time to pick up a glove and carry it to a box, based on a simple and statistically improbable hope that it be reunited with its mate.

So now that this Smiley Award press is bouncing around the internet, I wanted to publically (as if anyone reads this blog) thank Jenn and all the volunteers for the great experience I’ve had with the project.

Thanks.

I just got a few e-mails from the neuroling mailing list. I was once an aspiring neurolinguist. Now I study open development of educational resources at CMU’s HCII.

So I’ve unsubscribed to the neuroling mailing list. It’s liberating to let go of dreams, to pursue new ones.

This was my problem last night while shopping for a new monitor. I ultimately went with the Dell 2407WFP-HC - over the Samsung 245BW. (So I could connect a Wii, which I still long for.)

xkcd - A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language - By Randall Munroe

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man to beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.

Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day

Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.

- W.H. Auden

Canada’s Parliament overwhelmingly gave its approval to a motion proposed by Stephen Harper, the Conservative prime minister, to recognise French-speaking Quebec as “a nation within a united Canada”. Canada (1) | Nation bidding | Economist.com

In other news, I’m ending my e-mail subscription to The Economist. It’s part of my recent personal mandate to trim my attentional sails. They’re fraying at the edges and tearing at the seams.

I’m a scholar now, right? Time to get narrow-minded focused.

Langston Walker is 6-foot-8 and 345 pounds. He majored in economics at Cal. He plays football now for the Oakland Raiders.

He also lived opposite my door in Clark Kerr. As a Division I football player, I would see him rarely. He spent most of his time at practice, in class, or with tutors. Most of the time I did see him, he would be in my dorm suite mock-chocking the gymnasts I lived with. I never understood that, but they seemed to enjoy it. But I what I remember most is the heinous stench of his giant shoes.

He said this in a recent Sacramento Bee article:

“I bring a book for the plane ride,” Walker said. “Something that’s educational, something that will expand my mind.”

Such talk causes running back Justin Fargas to ask Walker, “Are you serious?”

Walker is very serious about reading. The last book he finished before leaving for Baltimore was “Freakonomics,” an alternative look at economics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner.

from recent AWADs that I liked:

Life is a foreign language; all men mispronounce it. -Christopher Morley, writer (1890-1957)

We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person. -William Somerset Maugham, writer (1874-1965)

by the by, I realize that my “Ramblings of a Supple Sort” aren’t ramblings at all, or haven’t been in ages. I think the “my blog” meme has died out, at least for me. For anyone who’s interested in my public digital presence, please refer to my Furl stream.

My new slogan. It said so.

I haven’t had an autobiographical entry here in a while. (Or much otherwise.) I keep a journal; that’s where my thoughts go.

I’m writing this here because I’m increduluous myself. Somehow broadcasting it to the world makes it more real: I started playing Civ 3 at noon today and when I closed the game the little white-on-blue clock in the corner said 6:03am. I thought it must have be tweaked, but then I turned my head (slowly because my neck at the moment contains steel cables) and out my window I saw daybreak.

And I’m not even tired! Must be because my range of movement all day was a few inches.

This isn’t because I’m a pathetic shut-in; it’s because I’m a pathetic gimp. I (re)injured my knee last weekend and I have to stay off it. It’s so frustrating; I think I might be better of amputating the damned thing and getting a peg-leg. I’ve always wanted a parrot.