Category Archives: Pals

Ninja Vs Robot

Pals, Photos

Saturday night was a scene of horrific violence.  A terrible cardboard box robot was terrorizing downstairs at our apartment.
Cardboard Box Robot Matt

Such a terrible scary monster! Such scary glowing eyes!

Fortunately, a t-shirt ninja appeared on the scene, swift, silent and slinky deadly.

T-Shirt Ninja Sam

Check out that ninja! Such crazy weaponry! The ninja and the robot fought very hard but finally, locked in combat, they stared eye to photoreceptor and gave in to sweet love. They settled down and are raising an evil army of robot ninjas.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!

Ikea Hack – Raised TV Panel

Pals, Photos, ,

Ikea Benno On Grundtal Legs

I mounted the Benno TV Bench with Panel on Grundtal Legs. We didn’t want to block a vent during the winter, and we also like the look of a tv floating higher in the air. I also removed the Benno’s apron so the leather cube poufs would fit underneath.

The 17″ Grundtal legs are done in a W so they fit the shallower Benno, and they are screwed to a piece of ply attached to the Benno’s supports. It is very stable so far and I’m quite satisfied.

Yes, I was going to build this all myself, but $140 for the Benno plus $50 for the legs is just wicked easy.

How could you hack open subtitles?

Art, Pals, Politics, Video, , , , , , ,

The Miro open subtitles project just got funded at kickstarter.

The promise is an open source of subtitles for video. Now the subtitles won’t be restricted to the people who made the video. They are anticipating use for the hearing impaired and for translations.  Why am I excited?

The project is also designed to make this decentralized, so that it can be implemented by other video players, and so that users can subscribe to multiple sites of subtitles.  That’s the interesting bit!

I’m seeing subtitles as commentary, subtitles with contrasting dialogue, snarky notes about continuity issues and product placement, or political connections…  Imagine the amazing ShiftSpace web experience 1, or Google’s Sidewiki, but for video.

It’s just cream that the project was funded by tiny donations from lots of strangers 2.

  1. I know Mushon through Eyebeam and Add-Art   (back)
  2. I’m one of them   (back)

Satoshi Kanazawa cannot think.

Incentives, Pals, Reviews, , , , , , , , , ,

That this has not proven to be a handicap for someone employed by the London School of Economics is astounding and reflects poorly on them.

I found him through the stupidest, most sexist article I have read this year.

He argues:

The power of female choice becomes quite apparent in a simple thought experiment. Imagine for a moment a society where sex and mating were entirely a male choice; individuals have sex whenever and with whomever men want, not whenever and with whomever women want. What would happen in such a society? Absolutely nothing, because people would never stop having sex! There would be no civilization in such a society, because people would not do anything besides have sex. This, incidentally, is the reason why gay men never stop having sex: there are no women in their relationships to say no.

This is the the point where I immediately knew Kanazawa cannot think. 1  Does he think that gay men do not hold jobs or have careers?  That they get nothing done?  That women do not want to have sex? 2   It takes but a moment’s reflection for any thinking person to look at that paragraph after having written it.  In a room where candles are going out from lack of oxygen one should still see the contradictions and quickly delete it.

Kanazawa cemented my opinion in the next paragraph.

This is why men throughout history have had to conquer foreign lands, win battles and wars, compose symphonies, author books, write sonnets, paint portraits and cathedral ceilings, make scientific discoveries, play in rock bands, and write new computer software, in order to impress women so that they will agree to have sex with them.  There would be no civilization, no art, no literature, no music, no Beatles, no Microsoft, if sex and mating were a male choice.

Surely he is aware that gay warriors, musicians, authors, poets, artists, scientists might be a slight rebuttal to his idea?

I no longer believe that he is aware of this.  I read another article where Kanazawa advocates killing every human being in the mideast as a solution to terrorism.  His list of articles is a grand collection of logical fallacies.

I do not approve of ad-hominem arguments. However, if  Satoshi Kanazawa makes any statement, I would be biased to think the statement is wrong.

  1. I would also guess that he does not or cannot read the news, let alone know any gay people.  How else could he have missed the great number of gay men struggling for the right to marry?   (back)
  2. Later in the article he reveals that his problem is small sample size.  Women do not want to have sex with Satoshi Kanazawa, and he generalizes from that.   (back)

That Loathsome Phrase

Incentives, Pals, , ,

“Someone has too much free time!”

My hackles rise,  my humours boil, and my smile disappears when I hear this.   It is a defense of sloth, a milquetoast reproach of work and effort and love.  But this post isn’t about that horror of a phrase.  It’s about the folks who use their free time.

The world is lucky to have people with hobbies, people with passions and obsessions.  To dismiss their effort instead of appreciating it is an insult.

I have friends who work their day jobs, but also run Etsy stores, or take time to produce art or write frequently updated blogs.  These people enrich the world.

They do not have more free time.  They are just using it differently.  Consider what we do with our free time, consider we are always approaching death, consider our time as a currency of the current – will we  invest it or spend it?

Will you write?  1 Will you code? 2  Will you design? 3 Will you play?  4Will you craft? 5 Will you photograph 6?  Will you volunteer?  7  How will you enrich the world?

Will you produce or will you just consume?

We don’t have to change our whole lives to do a bit more.  Sometimes, all it takes is committing to one weekend.   Constraints mean scaling back to picking a doable task, and then doing it.

I’d love to hear about what you are doing with your free time.

  1. Twanna writes about sexuality in her off time.  Tove’s fashion analysis blog wasn’t a job requirement, but a work of love. Georgia is writing a book and hopefully I’ll be linking to the amazon page sometime.  (back)
  2. Aaron fights in the courts for software freedom, then finds the time to make free software like identifox, the best identi.ca client.  (back)
  3. Erica’s jewelry is great.  I love her Birdie TV pendant.  (back)
  4. Katie Hasty writes about the music for her day job, but also plays in Numbers and Letters.  (back)
  5. Jess’s craft shop is a side gig, and Michela -how does she come up with all of these amazing quilts!   (back)
  6. Oh, the photo geeks I know… They are so good, it is intimidating.  Chris Restrepo, Darrick Coleman, Michael Mallin, Chris Acton – but you don’t have to be as good as those guys.  My flickr contacts page is full of folks who are just making some art or documenting their lives.   (back)
  7. Katie Schmid worked her ass off as a law student and now a lawyer, but still serves as director of the Newtown Creek Alliance.  (back)

Six Years Ago Today

Pals, , , , ,

At the Danger's "Rights of Passage" party

I went to the most important party ever.

It was in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. I wasn’t going to go, you weren’t going to go. It was a “come as a rockstar” party and I came as the world’s worst Billy Idol (black hair, t-shirt and camo shorts – only the sneer was close) and you came as nothing like Annie Lennox.

Somehow you’ve stuck with me and put up with me. I’m not the easiest person to get along with – but you are. I can’t be anything but a better person when I’m around you.

Today, I’m celebrating the best six years of my life, and looking forward to the rest of it.

I love you Sam and I’ll always be thankful for rooftops and Wesley Willis.

Professor Robb Willer and the Golden Apple

Browsers, Dev, Hacks, Pals, Video, , , , ,

Robb WillerThe group of misfits I grew up with has turned out pretty well.
One of them, Robb Willer was my debate partner for a while. He’s gone on to be a professor at Berkeley. Robb won the Golden Apple award for being an awesome teacher. How awesome? Robb’s got intellectual groupies!

Berkeley put up Robb’s lectures under a Creative Commons license, so you can download them if you want and distribute them. Of course, Berkeley hasn’t given people any links to download the lectures. A bit lame if you ask me. Also, the way they’ve presented the lectures is terrible. Clicking anywhere on the page during playback makes the video close! That won’t do. I whipped up a quick fix.

  1. Install the excellent greasemonkey firefox addon.
  2. Install my Better Berkely script to fix  the webcast page.

Done.  Now the video is fixed.  When I get a free moment I’ll update the script to provide download links to all of the lectures, because what use is a creative commons license when you can’t get the media‽ Now the videos are available for download as well.

Congrats Robb!

Some good advice to my friends who are terrified of this job market

Economics, Get.rich.quick, Incentives, Pals, , , , ,

Don’t try to dodge the recession with grad school.. Many of my friends are considering this sort of move. It’s a sucker bet for a number of reasons that Penelope outlines. My basic argument is her last one.

Graduate school forces you to overinvest: It’s too high risk.
In a world where people did not change careers, grad school made sense. Today, grad school is antiquated. You invest three to six extra years in school in order to get your dream career. But the problem is that not only are the old dream careers deteriorating, but even if you have a dream career, it won’t last. You’ll want to change because you can. Because that’s normal for today’s workplace. People who are in their twenties today will change careers about four times in their life. Which means that grad school is a steep investment for such a short period of time.

You put in many years of avoiding adult life and prolonging adolescence, then commit to a career you have no real idea about. When I thought I might want to be a lawyer, I worked for a law firm and was firmly told by many lawyers that this is the worst job ever. When I thought I wanted to be on the news, I became a news reporter and learned why the news structurally has to be terrible. You learn more by doing.

Of course, that’s coming from a guy who hasn’t gone to graduate school. I still think though, that if you are lost, or unsure, the general best bet is to say yes to lots of opportunities and ditch the ones you hate. You will get somewhere by staying in motion, and learn more things.