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Tuesday, May 13, 2008 Max drew 6 trains recently. Monday, April 14, 2008 Yesterday Max decisively beat me at Go. Admittedly, at the outset, I gave him some help and intentionally made a few bad moves to help get him going. But by the time we were 20% through the game I was actually trying, and a soon-to-be 5-year old beat me. This has a few possible interpretations: (1) I'm really bad at Go, (2) Max is really smart, or (3) some combination of (1) and (2). [08:13 | Link] Saturday, April 05, 2008 The best way to live-- from the Tao Te Ching, V. 8 Following up on previous posts here and here, I continue to attempt to reconcile...
Grabbing and stuffing--However, as my brain has passively processed all of this over the past several months, I think I'm finally starting to unify these ideas. I am recognizing that perhaps they do not contain the inherent contradictions I once thought. Water, the presence and lack thereof, whether liquid, as a flow or a body, or solid, as a glacier, has formed and continues to form the natural landscape in which we live. The cycle of water can be seen as an analogue for certain journeys in life, which can include aspirations. I am one who seeks like water. The older I get, the more I realize that things cannot be forced. All we can do is seek out that which fits our life and our context, and then enable it. Through this seeking, and through the un-contrived pursuit of opportunities that fit one's circumstances, each person can achieve a success that resonates with them. The difficult part is the search, and having the wisdom to recognize which aspirations should be pursued (and then enabled), and which should be ignored. I believe this general concept applies to goals, relationships, and in fact everything in one's life. It is a lesson learned from water, from gravity. It is a cycle, and a journey from high to low. Success comes at the bottom.
Sunday, March 30, 2008 From time to time, I'm known to fall asleep reading to my kids. This gives my wife two choices: Leave me alone, in which case I usually wake up around 2:00 AM and crawl pathetically into bed, or two, kick me so that I wake up. Depends on her mood. Last night, I managed to drag my sorry hide downstairs and we watched BSG Razor (awesome). Rose gave me a little sarcastic remark like, "Nice to have you awake for the whole movie..." To this I replied, "It's easy to stay awake when you have a knot in your stomach," referring of course to how one feels when watching BSG. It's a good knot. Season 4 starts this week. I've never before been excited for the new season of a television show. Time to format the DVR's hard drive. [06:57 | Link] Saturday, March 22, 2008 File under fun with rolling balls/marbles/George Rhoads-esque: Binary Marble Adding Machine (direct link to video). [07:31 | Link] Sunday, March 16, 2008 Pajama day. Thursday, March 13, 2008 Mobile Computing page updated. [23:39 | Link] Tuesday, March 04, 2008 One week ago Starbucks closed its stores nationwide for about 3 hours to train its 'baristas' (sarcastic quotes intentional) and, according to the company's former CEO, regain some of the romance and soul of the espresso experience. Coffee connoisseurs around the world laughed out loud at the news. The subtitle of this ABC news article nails it: 'Coffee Purists Say a Few Hours of Training is Hardly Enough to Learn the Art of Espresso'. The community at CoffeeGeek had a few interesting things to say about the event. Timely as ever, NPR's The World offered a short but highly informative story within its GeoQuiz on the true art of espresso (thanks, Rose!). As you may already know, I'm a junkie. [08:42 | Link] Sunday, February 24, 2008 My wife and I (and now our kids, 4 and 1) have been fans of Animusic ever since we first saw the early videos back when we were at Cornell (Wayne Lytle wrote his first music animation software while at Cornell). The first video we saw, and one of the most memorable, was called "Pipe Dream". Now two guys, Dan Paluska and Jeff Lieberman, have created an "automated multi-instrumental orchestral machine" that bears more than a passing resemblance to the ball-bouncing instruments in Pipe Dream. It's located at 186 Orchard St. in New York City. Wonderful...I can't wait to show this to my kids! (via Gizmodo) Incidentally, if you like bouncing balls, check out some of George Rhoads' sculpture, another Ithaca resident. (previously) [07:35 | Link] Saturday, February 23, 2008 At io9, The Pros and Cons of a Google Brain Implant. My comment: ...Over the next 10-50 years this could be a real issue.[08:15 | Link] Sunday, February 17, 2008
Wednesday, January 30, 2008 Success There is no such thing as success. There are no rewards, there are no punishments. There are only actions and consequences. What's inside will show through to the outside. [08:31 | Link] Saturday, January 26, 2008 Strange harmonics. This morning I woke up and the fountain pen on my desk was clink, clink, clinking in its metal spring holder as I typed, and the soup pot atop the refrigerator was resonating with the vibration from the compressor. I have never noticed these sounds before. [07:59 | Link] Sunday, January 06, 2008 Winter/Christmas 2007 photos posted. [07:34 | Link] Wednesday, January 02, 2008
Monday, December 31, 2007 Fall photos posted. [16:58 | Link] Thursday, December 27, 2007 Yesterday, we stayed inside all day and played with toys. [06:56 | Link] Tuesday, December 18, 2007 Of the written works I’ve ingested in my life so far, the Tao Te Ching has resonated with me the most. It is the only text that has moved me to tears--the moment I realized, finally, someone had written words describing what I’d felt my entire life (but never been able to articulate). The Tao Te Ching also presents my greatest internal struggle yet: How do I reconcile living like water with the belief that long-term aspirations are good? [06:09 | Link] Monday, December 17, 2007 This morning while walking to work through the beautiful, clear cold, I had yet another lesser revelation ("LERE"). I am a selfish person (that's not the revelation). Getting married and having children are the best things ever to happen to me. Those acts gave me someone to give to besides myself. Now I am selfish in support of my family, which is a much more forgivable iniquity. [07:32 | Link] Friday, December 14, 2007 I promise that Max really is learning to play the piano too, but sometimes the built-in features of the keyboard are just too tempting to pass up: Notice the timely use of the pitch bend wheel, and the splashy drum solo at the end... (My apologies for the infrared, but I couldn't get the shot without it.) [09:56 | Link] Monday, December 10, 2007  Esmé-nessOn Sunday morning we had to take Esmé to the hospital to get an x-ray, because her pediatrician thought she may have broken her leg (a so-called “infant fracture”, which as I understand it is not uncommon). Turns out it’s only sprained, but the poor girl can’t walk right now and it just breaks your heart! She had tumbled off a chair in an attempt to grab something atop a desk, which was about two feet away. One of those things that can happen when you leave an 18-month old alone in a room for a minute... It’s funny, though: this is yet another incidence when Rose and I see the amazing contrasts between our kids. They both came from us, but they couldn’t be more different. Max never got into trouble climbing on things, so of course Esmé is a climber. Max has no tolerance for pain (can’t deal with flu shots, for example), whereas Esmé seems to have a very high threshold (yikes). She just gives an angry glare at the doctor when she’s getting poked with a needle. Max has always seemed to be a problem solver, tending to work things out in his head. Early on, Esmé has shown a much stronger tenancy for drawing and fine motor skills. Now the Christmas tree is up, and in all of his four years Max never really bothered the ornaments thereupon. This year, the bottom 24” is ornament-free because Esmé, oblivious to our scolding, simply will not leave them alone. She’s her own girl, it’s so fun to watch. If I had to guess right now, I’d say she’s a smiling toughie, a sweetheart artist that you shouldn’t cross. Say it along with me: “tsa-tsij!” (sausage!--the most articulate of her first words). [06:53 | Link] Friday, December 07, 2007 Tom Clyde (aka DemocratDad) has a thoughtful post about discussing death with young children without invoking religious references. I posted a comment, which I'll reproduce here: My Grandfather, with whom I was very close, died when my son was just under two years old. Because we visit his grave regularly, talk about him and keep his picture up, we seem to have maintained my son's memory of him. It's wonderful that he still remembers him (however faintly), but because of our frequent discussion of someone who is no longer with us, we have touched on our first discussions of death with our son, who is now four years old. The first time it came up, when he was closer to two, I naively told him that when people die, they go to the moon. Now that he's interested in the solar system, and understands what the moon is (and that we've been there), that little ruse is falling apart. It's time to be honest. My wife and I have discussed this topic at length (along with religion), and while I do believe it's important to be truthful with children, I think that the specter of death (I mean, I'm afraid of it, aren't you, just a little?) is a bit heavy to deal with until you're significantly older. How old? I guess it depends on the person. For now, we just tell him (and our daughter, when she's old enough to ask) that when people leave this earth, we don't know where they go for sure. And we focus on the manner in which we *are* sure that they're with us: in memories. For further investigation: Parenting Beyond Belief. [07:05 | Link] Monday, December 03, 2007 In Newsweek: Is Photography Dead? Photography is finally escaping any dependence on what is in front of a lens, but it comes at the price of its special claim on a viewer's attention as "evidence" rooted in reality. As gallery material, photographs are now essentially no different from paintings concocted entirely from an artist's imagination, except that they lack painting's manual touch and surface variation. ... The next great photographers—if there are to be any—will have to find a way to reclaim photography's special link to reality. And they'll have to do it in a brand-new way.Via Digg. [13:31 | Link] Saturday, December 01, 2007 Photos added to Window Dressing series. [09:45 | Link] Sunday, November 25, 2007 The entire 1982 Atari 2600 catalog is scanned and online at AtariAge. I wore this catalog out as a kid. The interesting thing about the 2600 was that the games were so simplistic that in order to really be transported by them, you had to use your imagination. The artists creating cover art during this time did a worthy job attempting to capture the feeling that the gameplay was supposed to give you (even if, as was the case many times, the actual game came up a bit short). My favorite artists are Steve Hendrickson, Cliff Spohn and Ralph McQuarrie (attribution not 100% certain), who designed the cover art for the 2600 version of Vanguard. There is a good thread discussing the cover artists here. [07:44 | Link] A couple of good design links via Boing Boing: Retro-futuristic artwork; some images from Masquerade, The Amazing Camouflage Deceptions of World War II. 'For All Seasons', a small interactive animation at k10k, is simple and beautiful. I think I'll share it with my kids. [07:38 | Link] Thursday, November 22, 2007  How do you teach your child to lose? You want them to enjoy winning, to develop confidence and have fun at what they do. But you don't want to encourage a false sense (and perhaps a psychological dependence on) winning. Because as they get older, sometimes they'll lose.
Maybe the old “it's not whether you win or lose” cliché is true: Play well, regardless of the outcome. Play well, and in the long run you'll always win, because the victory is internal. [07:34 | Link] Wednesday, November 21, 2007 Esmé *loves* sausage! Tuesday, November 20, 2007 Photos added to Architectural and Window Dressing series. [08:58 | Link] Wednesday, November 14, 2007 Rose and I went to see Bruce Mau speak last night. Aside from the fact that he gave an inspiring, holistic, invigorating talk about the future of design (see Massive Change), he also had one of the most perfect PowerPoint presentations I've ever seen. The presentation:
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