Paul Natsuo Kishimoto - 2006

Harper's and Werner Herzog

2006-11-27T00:00:00+01:00

I subscribe to Harper's Magazine, which comes monthly and is always a good read. Wikipedia describes it as

a monthly general-interest magazine covering literature, politics, culture, finance, and the arts from a progressive, moderate left perspective in a fashion often not found in the ordinary news-media. It is the second oldest continuously-published monthly magazine (the oldest magazine being Scientific American) in the United States…

In the December 2006 issue, there's an interesting piece on thousands of scavengers living on an enormous garbage dump in Manilla, the Philippines. The phrase "economic Darwinism" is used, and the whole thing strikes me as another realization of William Gibson's dystopian, cyberpunk near-future.

There's also a review/interview on Werner Herzog, who's a maker of not-so-normal films:

Although his films take place everywhere (Germany, the United States, South America, Africa, Southeast Asia, Australia, the Middle East) and are about everything (adventure, courage, madness, failure, death, time, space travel, nature's indifference) his imagistic obsessions (auctioneers, flight, monkeys, chickens², ski jumpers, dwarves, bears, boats, wind, roosters³, midgets, mountains, wind-mills, hens) reappear again and again

On "chickens" there is a footnote:

Chickens (and roosters and hens) are Herzog's objective correlative and play some role in dozens of his films. A film as early as Even Dwarves Start Small contains a disquieting sequence in which a chicken eats a dead mouse. "Look into the eyes of a chicken and you will see real stupidity," Herzog has said. "It is a kind of bottomless stupidity, a fiendish stupidity. They are the most horrifying, cannibalistic and nightmarish creatures in the world."

I think anyone who's played Zelda can appreciate this. On "roosters", another footnote:

Herzog: "Years ago I was searching for the biggest rooster I could find and heard about a guy in Petaluma, California… I went out there and found Ralph… who weighed an amazing thirty-two pounds! Then I found Frank, a special breed of horse that stood less than two feet high. I told Frank's owner I wanted to film Ralph chasing Frank—with a midget riding him—around the biggest sequoia tree in the world… But unfortunately, Frank's owner refused. He said it would make Frank, the horse, look stupid.

I agree this was unfortunate, as I, for one, would have found it highly entertaining.

I have no particular point; this is just some plagiarism and an exhortation to subscribe to the freakin' magazine already.

The Tyranny of the Automobile

2006-11-08T00:00:00+01:00

Each month and year, I become a more rabid cheerleader for public transit. Where once I was simply delighted by the cheap, eco-friendly idea of having one person drive scores of others around, I'm now enraged by the attachment of the average Torontonian to his or her automobile. I'm even more incensed by quixotic city-dwellers who aspire to saving for and buying a car as a mark of adulthood. Such a waste of money!

I allow that using Mississauga Transit or its 905 equivalents is a horrendous experience. Even more horrendous is getting anywhere by bicycle—a tiring, if not impossible proposition in the winter. Freedom of movement a sound principle, the same one that created the wheelchair ramp. However, many people fail to make basic connections regarding their commute, and therefore move themselves around in the clumsiest of ways. Notably:

A Hummer is not a suitable vehicle for a lone driver. The high-occupancy vehicle lanes (HOV) on the 403 are a great idea because they give preference to the clever drivers who astoundingly have people sit in the seats in their cars. If you reject the arms-race mentality that prizes larger vehicles for better crash protection (the other vehicle is more likely to be damaged and its driver injured), there's very little reason to own a large truck, SUV or oversize car.
Transportation scales. Compare the population densities of Toronto (3,939/km²) and [Markham (981/km²)—logically, when population quadruples, individual space allotment quarters. Your ~4 m² car scales to a roomy square metre to stand in on the subway. Eight lane roads scale to two, and so on.
Driving is inefficient. Matters of space and fuel aside, individual drivers in individual vehicles are a poor substitute for trains and buses. Rubbernecking at accidents, overcaution in moderately poor weather, and a mix of driving styles from timid to road-rage aggressive combine to make traffic behave like clotting blood. Infrastructure engineers simulate rush-hour using models based on viscous fluids.

All this said, three unsung ideas I claim no credit for:

Bury the Gardiner](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markham%2C_Ontario) (pdf) Crumbling concrete, or green space with traffic confined to a tunnel? I could go on at length about this, but I won't.
Transit Integration I'd love to travel to the far side of the city on a single pass. I wouldn't even mind paying a zone fare (more for a longer trip). Change, and individual tickets and tokens for the TTC, Go and Mississauga Transit are discouragingly heavy and needlessly expensive. A prime example is my commute to work; for a trip shorter than most rides I take within either Mississauga or Toronto, I pay $5.25 because I start at Dixie and finish at Kipling.
Automated Parking Compare 20 x 20 m / 12 cars = 33.3 m2/car to a standard parking garage, 60 x 30 m / 33 cars = 54.5 m2/car. In the footprint of the 5-storey, 165-car conventional garage, three underground, 9-level automated garages will hold 324 cars and be invisible, leaving the surface free for other uses. Anyone who has tried to find parking on the University of Toronto campus will appreciate the amount of space these would save; operators would appreciate the doubling or trebling of their parking income.

Tactile Trackball

2006-10-19T00:00:00+02:00

The ball is 3 cm in diameter, held either magnetically so all but a small polar area is exposed. In addition to rotating smoothly, the ball registers (but does not yield to) pressure; "clicking" is emulated by squeezing or pinching the ball with some combination of fingers. An LED blinks or a sound is played to indicate a click is registered.

An internal gyroscope allows smooth scrolling by flicking the ball in any direction. The gyroscope restricts the rotation of the ball to that axis until deactivated by another tactile signal.

With a suction cup or other attachment on the base and Bluetooth, the device is smaller than a 4 cm cube and provides a more user-friendly alternative to the laptop touch pad. It can also be attached to a wrist-mounted frame (similar to a slingshot's) to be always within reach, whatever the seating or arm position of the user.

The concept extends the Griffin Powermate, RIM Blackberry Pearl, and various other small trackball devices.

Corporus Colossus

2006-10-15T00:00:00+02:00

William Gibson's fiction is full of unique, near-future predictions about how society and culture respond to technology. The recent LonleyGirl15/YouTube story, closely mirroring the plot of his 2003 novel Pattern Recognition, invites serious consideration of some of his other concepts.

A theme carried by both the dialogue and narrative of his novels is the comparison of large corporations with biological entities. Hapless families and individuals of incredible wealth are cocooned inside corporate apparatus that has accrued with their fortunes.

This is a compelling idea, and not necessarily a new one. Economists and financial analysts have long recognized that any company has a sort of genetic code, stored somewhere in its organization, mix of employees, assets and liabilities. It is not surprising that they've found these factors exceptionally difficult to correlate with the company's behaviour -- after all, biologists have similar troubles with complexity. Researchers who have recently used massively parallel computing to simulate a single virus in a droplet of water acknowledge that sophisticated methods will be needed to predict macroscopic behaviour without resorting to brute force.

The biology-economy analogy breaks down when applied too closely, but several high-level insights are useful:

Economic colonialism (think McDonalds and Burger King openings overseas) can be likened to sporulation. If conditions are suitable, more franchises may emerge; otherwise the process either yields a single location in a large country, or fails altogether at little cost to the parent entity.
Entities will react with varying sophistication to ensure their own survival. GM is undergoing major reorganization to react to the presence of competitors (foreign carmakers) and its own excess weight - compare with moulting reptiles. Smaller companies would be unable to adapt to similar environmental changes. Government policy can be regarded as another "environmental" factor. Witness the speed at which online gambling firms fled the U.S. market after a recent bill outlawing Internet betting; bacteria display similar averse reactions to chemicals and pH changes in their habitats.
Identity becomes increasingly meaningless in the corporate (organism) structure as size increases. Gibson illustrates with characteristic borrowings from Japanese language and culture; the zaibatsu is the prototypical multinational, and the typical employee is a sarariman.

An extension of the latter point is that executives and boardmembers of large firms are absolved from many sorts of responsibility. This is a phenomenon widely cited an indicator of Western decadence, although the popular example of Enron defies the present analogy, because it was motivated by personal greed. The actions the HP board and its chair, Patricia Dunn, are perhaps more useful.

For Rousseau's noble savage and Hobbes' self-interested brute alike, corporate underlings are influenced primarily by the pressures that define their role in the corporate structure than they are by actual law. In short, while government is a macroscopic factor that affects the actions of whole companies, it is only tenuously felt by the atomic element of the corporate structure, the worker. Like the amino acid in the protein, his part in reactions and processes is dictated by very basic and immediate interactions.

As mere organelles, executives (to the same extent as other employees) are vectors of the forces of shareholder interest and the need to secure profits. This is in fact the place where the analogy is most tangent to Gibson's work; his cyberpunk characters are hired by secrective security contractors to participate in clandestine, paramilitary and highly illegal acts which are of crucial corporate interest.

Of course, there are some phenomena which can't be explained without stretching the analogy very thin. For example, Wal-Mart's monopsonistic relationship with its suppliers is difficult to analyse except by comparison to symbiosis or parasitism. We should like to say Wal-Mart is killing its hosts, only this is weak because it is much larger.

An ideological revelation which follows from this analogy is that societal expectations for moral behaviour of employees do not suffice to constrain companies to act in certain ways—for example, on the environment. Governmental pressure is necessary to alter the "waters" in which the "bacteria" swim, and alter their habits of consumption and production of wastes.

Getting the Ball Rolling

2006-08-30T00:00:00+02:00

I'd initially planned to delay publishing anything new until I'd imported all my old blog posts, updated the code behind my books page, got some work done for skule.ca, and so on. I'm starting to realize those are all long term processes that shouldn't stand in the way of another attempt to blog regularly.

Another feature I've always had in mind was a page for all the links with which Dave and others keep spamming me, or which I dig up myself. Yesterday I realized that it would make more sense to use a service like del.icio.us, but I remain wary of tagging sites. They seem a bit masturbatory and are too "Web 2.0" for my taste. So, it looks like I'll be making dozens of short posts full of links.

That's probably a good thing - any content is better than no content.

Spannungsbogen

Frank Herbert's Dune novels continue to be a goldmine of interesting concepts and ideas. Today I was reminded of spannungsbogen. This is a quality I need to develop. I'm not compulsive, but I notice the following behaviour:

I discover an interesting technology / author / other item.
I research until I've found the best-reviewed, -rated or most popular example of #1.
I convince myself #2 would improve me or my life.
I am unable to prevent myself from buying / obtaining #2, usually on short notice.

4 is especially strong. Last week I bought a Bible. I happened to see it in the bookstore, and picked it up merely because it was on display, it's a Penguin Classics edition, and I'd just finished the Koran (perspective is important!). Now I'm looking at an iPod nano. Hence, spannungsbogen.

New Website

2006-08-16T00:00:00+02:00

This is my new website. The old one is at khaerukama-o.geodave.net, but won't be updated anymore.

I also have a new e-mail address: mail@paul.kishimoto.name. Please update your address books.

Stay tuned for unbelievably exciting (vis not exciting) things.

September 11

2006-04-18T00:00:00+02:00

This will be the first in a number of articles meant to express my opinion on common topics. Often I find I can’t explain my view concisely without feeling I’m cheating someone out of part of the story. Referrals to this page should obviate the need to make editorial decisions that deny people information - decisions I justifiably hate making.

Today’s topic: the attacks of 11 September 2001.

The September 11 attacks were not faked or perpetrated by individuals under the direction of the White House, George W. Bush or his staff, the CIA, the FBI or any government group. The common argument runs, roughly:

There is no way the terrorists could have eluded customs, the intelligence community, the police, airport security, etc.
The Bush Administration wanted to make war on Afghanistan/Iraq, and views ‘common American people’ as expenable.
Certain analyses of video, audio and photographs of the attack show phenomena irreconcilable with the appearance/sound of normal jetliners.
Therefore, the attacks were engineered by non-terrorists using prepared jets, so that Al-Qaeda could be blamed and Afghanistan invaded.

Sadly this line of ‘reasoning’ subscribes to a different species of the very paranoia the administration fosters. Some remarks:

There is a way the terrorists could have entered the U.S. To believe in an airtight Customs system, the omnicognizance of the U.S. intelligence services or the omnipotence of the military machine is to put blind faith in a number of deeply flawed systems. My impression of American government is one of a bureaucracy that views itself as something to be circumvented, with the result that nothing is well-coordinated (despite the largely unsung efforts of a small number of honest people). In any case, the porousness of borders and international transporation is real, and due more to poor and incomplete execution of current systems than the absence of The Next Big Fix.
I’ll agree that the current White House team is a blundering, corrupt, shoot-from-the-hip group of ignorant warmongers. This is precisely why this propostion is laughable. The level of sophistication, coordination and indirection required to plan an event like 9/11 is entirely beyond them. There’s no doubt there were plans to invade Afghanistan, Iraq or even Iran on file before 9/11; I’m sure senior members of the administration plan wars like the rest of us play Risk, and view it as just as harmless. They were definitely quick out of the gate when the (flimsy) excuse presented itself, but they couldn’t have conceived of anything as clever as faking a terrorist attack to justify an invasion.
These arguments resemble the arguments of unscientific types convinced that UFOs are alien spacecraft. Beware the bullying line of “It’s right there in front of your eyes - can’t you see it? I see it… everyone else sees it. Are you stupid?”, beware armchair aerostructures and demolition experts, beware conveniently selected reference photos of ordinance mounted on much smaller aircraft. I’m particularly annoyed by the “That little bit of jet fuel couldn’t have taken down the Twin Towers” argument. Many people are clearly unaware of what jet fuel is and how tall buildings are constructed. This is another example of the ‘America Is Invincible’ hypothesis, whose proponents would expect the Statue of Liberty to withstand a direct meteorite strike. Ridiculous.
Logic fails completely here.

In general the whole thing can be dismissed via Occam’s Razor, by stacking “Surprisingly, Arabs can also fly airplanes, and knives are sharp,” against volumes of conspiracy theories. People need to have the sophistication to find the intelligent middle ground between blind faith and the unconstructive, combative ‘question everything’ approach. Listen more, preach less.

Freedom and Reform

2006-02-06T00:00:00+01:00

A few ideas have crystallized for me as I've read about the ongoing furor over the Danish and other European newspapers publishing offensive cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed. Without repeating too much common knowledge, certain Islamic scriptures forbid realistic depictions of the prophets, but depictions of that sort have been made for centuries. Various newspapers are reprinting the cartoons, citing freedom of the press, and the images are not only in violation of this particular scripture, but also offensive (see the above link).

I've also read this opinion by a 'Muslim dissident', which says, amongst other things:

A democracy cannot survive long without freedom of expression, the freedom to argue, to dissent, even to insult and offend. It is a freedom sorely lacking in the Islamic world, and without it Islam will remain unassailed in its dogmatic, fanatical, medieval fortress; ossified, totalitarian and intolerant. Without this fundamental freedom, Islam will continue to stifle thought, human rights, individuality; originality and truth. Unless, we show some solidarity, unashamed, noisy, public solidarity with the Danish cartoonists, then the forces that are trying to impose on the Free West a totalitarian ideology will have won; the Islamization of Europe will have begun in earnest. Do not apologize.

There are so many things wrong with these two paragraphs I despair of getting to my actual point, but I'd like to point out that:

There is no freedom to insult and offend. Insult and offense are an unavoidable consequence of the rights of freedom of expression and opinion, whose purpose is to encourage open and inclusive dialogue. For said purpose, it is always desirable to exercise the freedoms so as to minimize insult and offense, for these are unconstructive.
A number of stereotypes about Islam are cited. These are accurate in some ways but mainly reinforce misconceptions. Islam is not, as far as I can tell, designed to stifle anything; the fault lies with fundamentalists. Similar rhetoric could be applied against Christianity, and most would agree that only evangelicals and Christian fundamentalists would gladly silence others.
The Islamization of Europe is apparently a negative process. I seem to have missed when this started occurring, or was decided to be harmful.
Only righteous pricks (pardon my French) refuse to apologize.

My general feeling is two-fold. Firstly, the newspapers were out of order printing the cartoons, but excusably so. _Re-_printing, however, was deliberately confrontational. Journalists, of all people, should expect by now that when Muslim sensibilities are offended, there are polar and often violent reactions. The fact that these are excessive is not a reason for like retaliation; such infantile bickering over the 'last word' has created the problems we see today in Israel and Palestine.

Secondly and more broadly, democracy and Islam are not incompatible. The Western and Middle-Eastern worlds are not incompatible. Stranger partnerships and cooperations have occurred. However, reform must come from within -- this, I think, is apparent from the reactions to provocation and pressure that populate today's world news. The proposed approach is preposterous, and even the most moderate, gentle and kindly program of 'education' on the part of the West could be viewed as massively arrogant. Consider the many social, ethnic and cultural inequalities in America. While I agree that democracy is an excellent form of government, it can hardly be argued that any one Western state is flawlessly exemplary of the form. For any nation or coalition to presume to rapidly install already-imperfect Western democracy in a region accustomed to theocracy is not only folly, but hubris of the highest degree.

Returning to the issue at hand, the lack of an apology of any sort points to a press that is more self-important than truly concerned with free expression. If governments are unwilling to take such miscreants in hand and reprimand them for what amounts to racist taunts, then efforts toward East-West conciliation and negotiation are doomed to be derailed over and over.

Now Playing: Tracy Chapman - Tracy Chapman - 04 - Behind The Wall

Touchstone

2006-02-02T00:00:00+01:00

I make frequent attempts at humour. Often they fail, because most of my jokes are referential. I depend on lateral thinking to insert the unexpected or (seemingly) unrelated into a situation or a conversation. The humour is created either by the juxtapositon of the two items, or, more commonly, poached outright from the thing I'm referencing.

Either way I rely on a whole lexicon of stock phrases, quotations, tidbits and so on to execute this sort of joke. What follows is an informal guide to the most common of these. For the most part the humour isn't explained -- because any explanation will ruin a joke -- only the phrase(s) and a link to the source are provided. I plan to continue updating it as things come to mind.

Keep in mind many of these are offensive to varying degrees. Reader discretion is advised.

Together / Oil / Are you talking about _my_ vagina? Sexual harassment training video [parody](http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6606512879132117173)

I'm still crying. ['emo'](http://emo.urbanup.com/776537), Urban Dictionary

The Ugly One! / I have a crush on EVERY BOY! / ARROWED / Ow! My skin! / MSG'D / Ow! My stomach lining! / GRASPED! / CHILDREN! / SAILING MISHAP / CEREBELLUM'D / LATE-360 SHOVE IT TO BONELESS'D / TWO'D / Wave O'Babies / How do you be so short? / FLOOR TOMMED / TWELVE SIDED DIED / Corn (chips) is (are) no place for a might warrior / There like shareware / Makey outy / CABER TOSSED / LATHE'D / Get it on like Diddy Kong [Teen Girl Squad](http://www.homestarrunner.com/tgsmenu.html), homestarrunner.com

Damn you Salazar! Matt LeBlanc in [Charlie's Angels](http://imdb.com/title/tt0160127/quotes)

Eat the pig and then together we burn! Burn! / Come with me! You belong with me! Burn! etc. Adam Sandler in [Dirty Work](http://imdb.com/title/tt0120654/quotes)

Hokay, so / Shit guys, ze missiles are coming, fire our shit / (But) I am le tired / WTF, mate? / 'Bout that time, eh chaps? Righto / Ahh MOTHERLAND! / Shfifty-five / Shiggity-shiggity-shwa / I want to play it / They look so goddamn like the same person / They are twins, that is why / I would say to them "Do you want ice cream cone?" Both of them say yes! / Testiclites [The End of the World](http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/end.php), [Mario Twins](albinoblacksheep.com/flash/mario.php) and other [Group X](http://www.groupxarab.com/) audio and video

BOOM, HEADSHOT! / Uber micro / I could dance all day [Pure Pwnage](http://www.purepwnage.com/)

Ha! Ha! (Not to scale!, 'Rassment'!, Loins!, Dangly parts!) / …in my pants / MINDTAKING! / Stick with the kid! / Caliente / MANY others [Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law](http://www.tv.com/harvey-birdman-attorney-at-law/show/5484/summary.html)

Numerous quotes from the popular movies and cartoons:

[Napoleon Dynamite](http://imdb.com/title/tt0374900/quotes)
[Anchorman](http://imdb.com/title/tt0357413/quotes)
Family Guy
The Simpsons
Futurama
American Dad

Cop-Out

2006-01-16T00:00:00+01:00

That's right. Nothing original is said in this post, but a post it is. The following are PDF versions of the MIE374 lecture notes:

[Chapter 1](http://khaerukama-o.geodave.net/data/mie374/MIE_374_CH_01_Slides.pdf)
[Chapter 2](http://khaerukama-o.geodave.net/data/mie374/MIE_374_CH_02_Slides.pdf)
[Chapter 3](http://khaerukama-o.geodave.net/data/mie374/MIE_374_CH_03_Slides.pdf)
[Chapter 4](http://khaerukama-o.geodave.net/data/mie374/MIE_374_CH_04_Slides.pdf)
[Chapter 5](http://khaerukama-o.geodave.net/data/mie374/MIE_374_CH_05_Slides.pdf)
[Chapter 7](http://khaerukama-o.geodave.net/data/mie374/MIE_374_CH_07_Slides.pdf)
[Chapter 13](http://khaerukama-o.geodave.net/data/mie374/MIE_374_CH_13_Slides.pdf)
[Chapter 14](http://khaerukama-o.geodave.net/data/mie374/MIE_374_CH_14_Slides.pdf)
[Chapter 15](http://khaerukama-o.geodave.net/data/mie374/MIE_374_CH_15_Slides.pdf)
[Chapter 16](http://khaerukama-o.geodave.net/data/mie374/MIE_374_CH_16_Slides.pdf)
[Chapter 17](http://khaerukama-o.geodave.net/data/mie374/MIE_374_CH_17_Slides.pdf)
"Week 5 Supplement" _Chapter_ 5?

In addition there's a one-file version (2.9 MB) and a 4-up version (1.7 MB) for easy printing on ECF.

Lifehacking

2006-01-09T00:00:00+01:00

Computers make us more productive. Yeah, right. Lifehacker recommends the downloads, web sites and shortcuts that actually save time. **Don't live to geek; geek to live.** [Lifehacker.com](http://www.lifehacker.com)

I'm not sure why I haven't read this site before, but it's definitely on my reading list now. It's an admirable message that I sympathize with. Computers, the Internet and the software and data on them are wonderfully powerful tools; but they're just that: tools. There's no point owning a massive industrial lathe when all you need is a Dremel tool.

I'll use Lifehacker for suggestions from here on out. In terms of my absurdly extensive computer experience, the truly valuable yield has been the knowledge of what works easily and intuitively, and what doesn't. I know in many cases the wrong way to do things, mainly because there are many wrong ways and I've tried them all. I also know there's no 'right' way; just the thing that's currently suited for me.

On my software page I've linked the current bests. Some choices: I use Firefox and Thunderbird because they're lightweight and secure; I only use the Windows Firewall because I don't have any real requirement for traffic shaping or extra security; I use the free University of Toronto Symantec Antivirus Corporate Edition0 but disable auto-protect because it taxes my harddrives too much while file sharing. With a combination of these and what I prefer to call 'not doing stupid shit' I haven't had a virus infection in years.

I use GAIM for instant messaging because it handles MSN, ICQ, AIM and Jabber (including Google Talk). I still have to switch to actual MSN to view webcams, but that feature should be part of GAIM soon. This would be a bad option for those fond of custom smileys and all the other features of MSN that I personally find annoying. GAIM also tabs message windows much like Firefox tabs webpages; this prevents six conversations from filling my taskbar.

The list goes on - my point is that all software choices should be motivated by certain knowledge:

What needs the user (you, someone asking for a recommendation) has.
What the available software options are.
What the features of each option are.
How simple your most common tasks are in each option.

For example, I use FileZilla for FTP and Programmer's Notepad for editing. To do most of my PHP/MySQL coding I'll download one file at a time from the server. FileZilla automatically opens the file in Programmer's Notepad; when I'm done, I save and exit (Programmer's Notepad does this very quickly) and then FileZilla prompts me to automatically upload the modified file. Because the PN interface is clean and helpful, this is a better option than hacking about with command-line editors stuff via SSH; however I do keep PuTTY around for some tasks.

I use a five-button trackball scroll mouse; the outside buttons are configured as Back (left) and Minimize All (right); clicking the scroll wheel opens Windows Explorer. I've got a Logitech keyboard with Media (Opens/Shows/Minimizes to system tray Winamp), Play/Pause, Mute, E-mail and WWW quick keys. I use a custom Visual Style from deviantART that's easier on the eyes than the Windows default. I've got a number of helpful keyboard shortcuts memorized (Ctrl-E in Firefox moves the cursor to the Quick Search box; Ctrl-Tab switches between tabs and Ctrl-W closes them).

The curious result of all this is that I find I can accomplish most routine tasks with only a few clicks or keystrokes, but a lot of people find my computer hard to use. This is fine; I'm not trying to run a kiosk machine. In an ideal world computers would be simple to use out of the box; regardless of what arguments you might make about Macs vs. PCs, they're generally not. The right choice of software can go a long way towards ultimate ease-of-use - ask me if you're ever wondering what the right choice is, and accept that if I give you a technical answer, I do it because it's the simplest you can get.

Now Playing: 30 Seconds To Mars - A Beautiful Lie - 07 - From Yesterday

'2006'

2006-01-02T00:00:00+01:00

Well, well. A New Year! I got wildly and inexcusably drunk on New Year's Eve at Konrad's place (Lil's blog has photos). Moreover, I did it intentionally, which is a rare and awesome thing. Today was the annual Kishimoto Family New Year's Day Open House (KFNYDOH, sounds like a martial art) at my uncle's place in Weston. For the uninitiated, this involves a lot of pre-cooking during Boxing Week, and about 125 guests (mostly adult friends of the family) coming by between 3 and 10 PM. The amount and variety of food defies description, but I'll try and find a picture for a later post. Even waking up hung over at 9 AM was offset by the traditional breakfast of mochi and o-zoni (sticky rice cakes and soup). All told a prize couple of days.

Time does not count itself. You have only to look at a circle and this is apparent. - Leto II (The Tyrant) Chapterhouse: Dune, Frank Herbert

As the parties subside I'm considering the New Year and what it holds. I usually badmouth resolutions in favour of strong willpower, but I rarely display that quality. The new year represents a (slightly) more concrete motivation to practice as I preach. Thus I resolve:

to weekly:
- write a poem, or portion thereof,
- Work out, run or circuit train at least twice,
- play guitar for an hour, and
- post on this blog;
to be more productive by working before playing;
to think before talking;
to be morally upright and honest, and not use the excuse of expediency cheaply;
to respect the views of others by avoiding the habitual, condescending labels 'unsophisticated' and 'ignorant'; and
to never cease trying on new ideas, experiences and viewpoints.

Combined, that's a fairly tall order, but they're all things I've been moving towards or doing sporadically over the past few months. Also I anticipate more free time this term, so hopefully I can be a bit more relaxed.

Now Playing: Smith & Mighty - Life Is… - 04 - Rise