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| Sunday, July 12th, 2009 |
stepleton
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2:01a |
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| Saturday, July 11th, 2009 |
jcreed
|
10:22p |
Saw "Moon" at the Regent Square theater with a bunch of people. The plot was a little holey, but I liked the acting and pacing, and Kevin Spacey as Voice of Ominous Smiley-Face Robot. I recommend avoiding seeing the spoilertrailer if you can. (7/10) |
leon
|
10:56a |
A call for recipes
I’ve been pretty quiet here for a week or so for a variety of reasons, including but not limited to:
- Writing the first piece for my study abroad column in The Phoenix for next year. This might seem counterintuitive, given it’s a study abroad column and I’m not yet abroad, but the school year at Swarthmore starts a full month before I leave for Oxford, so I need to find some pre-departure content. On that front, though, I’m going to beta test the piece before I actually commit to it, so expect a copy of it to be posted here reasonably soon.
- Work, which continues to be exceptionally busy and time-consuming, and may only become moreso in the coming weeks. It’s not official yet, but I may have a change in job title coming that will bring with it all sorts of exciting things. You’ll know when I do.
- My continued Buffy the Vampire Slayer marathon, which has replaced the social life I used to have at Swarthmore. That’s kind of the shitty thing about being in Florida all summer: there’s absolutely no one here.
- And, of course, my epic quest not to starve while my parents are on vacation.
Which is actually the point of this post. My mother’s carefully apportioned food ran out four days early, and since I have no desire to live on take-out from now until my family gets home, I’m looking for advice on things that are easy to cook. Note that this will be my first actual foray into the culinary arts, and that I’m completely incompetent. Like, incompetent on the level of having to Wiki the phrase “cast-iron skillet” because I don’t know what a skillet even looks like. So, if you have anything that you think would be of use and feel like contributing it to the Help Yoel Not Starve Project, feel free to comment or e-mail it.
Originally published at yoyoel.com. You can comment here or there. |
stepleton
|
1:15a |
vidfs
A nice nerdy post for you now. MATLAB is slow at reading frames from movies on my Mac, for no reason I can readily discern. Like, really, really slow---about 10 FPS for a 640x480 H.264 movie. Today I got fed up and wrote my own facility for reading movie frames. It works... differently. stepletron:vidfs tom$ ./vidfs ~/Desktop/rawmatte/Movie\ 3\ matte.mov -f mnt &
[1] 70872
stepletron:vidfs tom$ ls -l mnt/
total 80
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 3 Jul 9 13:00 INFO_depth
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 4 Jul 9 13:00 INFO_height
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 46 Jul 9 13:00 INFO_movie_file
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 2 Jul 9 13:00 INFO_num_channels
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 7 Jul 9 13:00 INFO_num_frames
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 5 Jul 9 13:00 INFO_row_step
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 4 Jul 9 13:00 INFO_width
dr-xr-xr-x 3 root wheel 4096 Jul 9 13:00 MATLAB
dr-xr-xr-x 3 root wheel 4096 Jul 9 13:00 PPMPPM
dr-xr-xr-x 3 root wheel 4096 Jul 9 13:00 RAWRAW
stepletron:vidfs tom$ cat mnt/INFO_width mnt/INFO_height
640
480
stepletron:vidfs tom$ file mnt/PPMPPM/15
mnt/PPMPPM/15: Netpbm PPM "rawbits" image data
stepletron:vidfs tom$ ls mnt/PPMPPM | wc -l
188020
stepletron:vidfs tom$ umount mnt
stepletron:vidfs tom$ ls -l mnt/
[1]+ Done ./vidfs ~/Desktop/rawmatte/Movie\ 3\ matte.mov -f mnt
stepletron:vidfs tom$ So basically the vidfs program turns the movie file into mounted filesystem. Each frame is its own file---actually, it's three files, in three formats, in three separate folders (PPM, a raw format, and a format convenient for reading into MATLAB). You can open the frame in an image editor if you like---of course, you can't save a modified frame back into the movie, but I don't need that. Two things make this really easy to do. The first is OpenCV---for all its ugliness, it's good at reading single frames from movies without having you deal with the QuickTime/GStreamer/whatever API. The second is FUSE, which does a wonderful job of making userspace filesystems fall-off-a-log simple to implement. You implement four callbacks and your read-only filesystem is ready to go. GNU Hurd translators on an OS that people actually use... not too shabby. VMWare Fusion installs FUSE so that you can read disk images; if you have a Mac, you may already have FUSE. Otherwise, you can get it from MacPorts or just build it yourself. Linux folks can turn to their package manager, I assume. Right now MATLAB pulls frames from vidfs at about 50 FPS. A custom MEX routine for reading files from vidfs will likely yield improvements. vidfs.cc, quick 'n dirty, but works on a Mac at least. Needs OpenCV and FUSE, as noted. |
| Friday, July 10th, 2009 |
jcreed
|
9:34p |
What do you get if you combine super lo-fi 32kbps mp3 encoding, SWFTOOLS, and crumbly sleep-deprived left-over bits of sanity? Flash dancing blob! Perhaps my greatest accomplishment in the field of pointless animated musical proof-of-concept demos since my 6502 threading library MUSTARD.NES. The concept this is proving is not very special in this case, just that command-line swf tools (called " SWFTOOLS") actually work as advertised. In some cases, even better than advertised since the docs imply that png and mp3 support has not yet been implemented, but the implementation says otherwise. |
jcreed
|
7:47p |
If you think my thesis has too many maths and not enough pretty pictures, you should read Raph Levien's PhD thesis. It is about the Spiro font tool/library he made, which I'm kind of suprised I haven't heard about before. This YouTube video explains better than words can. It was about 1:40 in where I started going "ooohhhhh I see why this is useful". |
bluealvarez
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12:13p |
Animal House
I am shifting from an animal rights to an animal welfare position more and more lately for several reasons, some of which have been outlined well already by Peter Singer, via the concept of equal consideration of interests. Not the least of these is my desire to knit wool. No sense in sugar coating it - there are a lot of fabulous vegan fibers out there, but in a New England winter, wool is king. I also still work for a cashmere knitwear company. And frankly, I am not one to bite the hand that feeds. And so I find myself slipping back into some culturally convenient modes while realizing I have learned too much about factory farming to ever fully revert. I still really only like ice cream and could pretty much do without any other dairy - in which case I find it best to try to stick to the non-dairy frozen desserts as much as possible, especially since I am ethically opposed to factory dairy farms. I wouldn't want to be kept hormonally "pregnant" and lactating unnaturally, would you? But on the other hand, I crave seafood something fierce. Not all the time, but once in a while it comes over me, and not in a "I just want something fishy tasting" sort of way. I already supplement with B12 and Omega-3 from flax, so really, I can't imagine it's a deficiency issue. Nor would it be too strongly cultural, since no one is ever trying to force lobster on me. I mean, if I can avoid pizza, ubiquitous as it is, surely I can avoid high priced delicacies from the sea. But I have chosen to give in a few times in the last two months, partly because I just couldn't be arsed to fight it. Which brings me to one of the biggest reasons I am taking a more relaxed approach to this now, which is that I am at a tipping point in my personal life right now and most days it is acutely more important for me to do what is best for me at that moment than to worry about a sheep or fish somewhere off in the distance. That said, having learned about animal cruelty I can't unlearn that information. So I am trying to make good decisions that benefit my health while still honoring animal welfare as much as possible. When I buy wool, I try to source it from local and/or responsible farms. I am eating fish only sparingly and again try to choose the source of my seafood wisely. I'm largely avoiding dairy, and totally avoiding beef, chicken, and leather. The latter are not only because of animal welfare, but also because I do not agree with what large scale meat and leather production does to our health, economy, and environment. Part of this comes after reading up on the difference between animal rights and animal welfare, and realizing that while I feel a mostly-vegan diet is really better for the planet and doable on varying levels for most people, I'm not sure I agree that animals are equal to humans, or that they could be accorded rights as members of a pan-species society. But I don't think they're there just for our sake, either. So I am walking that middle ground of really preferring not to feed off of their lives in any way, but accepting that at the end of the day, I am always going to be more concerned with the bee keeper being able to make a living than I am with the life of the bees. I supposed that's speciesism (sometimes referred to as specism), right? Someday, maybe a few generations from now (possibly in my lifetime) this blog post may seem like a perfect example of narrow-minded, rationalized prejudice, not unlike prejudice against black Americans was only 40-50 years ago. Maybe so. In some ways I hope so, because maybe that would mean we'd significantly evolved as a society. But today, life is hard enough, and while I am still aiming for progress in this arena, I am no longer concerned with perfection. Current Mood: ambivalent |
bluealvarez
|
9:26a |
The Littlest Knitter
So, I went to see the South End Knitters last night, and they were prepping for a group member's birthday. Now, being a recent re-joiner and not reading every Ravelry thread as closely as possible, I knew it was Claire's birthday, but had no idea who Claire was. Well, this is Claire:  Precocious doesn't even begin to cover it. Claire turned 9 yesterday, and much to our delight, had been to Storyland in NH recently to celebrate, from whence she brought her marvelous hat:   Stacey found the hat especially marvellous:   Ah, youth. So, let it be known that knitting knows no (age) bounds. And the South End Knitters are insanely awesome for welcoming a (parent-accompanied) young knitter into their inner circle. |
| Wednesday, July 8th, 2009 |
daemonv
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10:47p |
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jcreed
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11:59p |
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recsrainbow
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4:28p |
[Site Update] Candychant
Site name: Candychant Site URL(s): http://community.livejournal.com/candychant/Reccer(s): me ( ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) legolindsay) and Robin ( mini_bat) Intro: Slash, slash, a sprinkle of Harley Quinn, and you got our recs. Robin's quite fond of Batman (Dick/Tim, basically), so that'll be abundant too. Fandom List: Batman, DC universe, crossovers, Marvel universe, X-men, Spiderman, Harry Potter |
bluealvarez
|
1:09a |
How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love Le Bombe
Thoughts from a sleepless mind: Boston Handmade is at Union Square this weekend, 3 - 7 pm. One Happy Island is playing and Common Cod Fiber Guild will have a booth there in addition to the fabulous vendors, manned by none other than Mr. Purl himself. Also, free demos by my old friends Shobu Aikido. All in all, if you consider yourself part of the DIY in-crowd, this is the time and place to represent. Immediately before that at The Stitch House I'll be teaching another serger workshop. So if you missed it a few weeks ago, now's your chance to jump in and learn coverstitch, overlock, and machine maintenance and threading for a mere $15. Beyond that: Wednesday nite Ms. Stephanie The Great is helping me turn the sheep's worth of roving I bought from Spunky Eclectic into proper bulky yarn for the Vulcanized sweater.
I am reading Nausea by Sartre and It is the most ambivalence-producing thing I have ever read. At times I feel no one gets me like Jean-Paul, and then suddenly the story changes, goes that step too far, and I want to hurl the book down a sewer grate. What I can't decide is if this revulsion is because he touched too deep a nerve, or because it's beyond my ability to relate. If I am even verbalizing this, it's probably the former. Am planning to move the blog to Wordpress very soon and add a Twitter feed there. Will syndicate the feed here so that LJ still updates accordingly. Would also like to start up that Boston Vanguard site I purchased but am now rethinking its use. Perhaps a more polished, less DIY-centric menswear site for my testosterone-driven designs? More later, after sleep ensues. |
| Monday, July 6th, 2009 |
sarahtales
|
4:32p |
Appearances, Questions and Vampires
The contest for an early copy of The Eternal Kiss is closed: thank you all so much for entering! It is deeply, deeply appreciated. I had so much fun seeing everyone's pictures! People with weapons! People dressed up as Mae! It was horribly difficult to choose. The winner is: demon circles, fever fruit and talismans - drawing summoning circles at three a.m. is my new definition of hardcore. The winner of another advance copy of The Eternal Kiss, which I obtained by probably nefarious means: Sin, fever blossoms and a demonic penguin. Email me at sarahreesbrennan@gmail.com, you guys. Trying to choose honourable mentions actually made me collapse under the sheer weight of awesomeness, but I admit to a particular fondness for Mae in Sydney. This Friday I will be heading off to the UK to do a number of things, like a photoshoot (Oh God, 2859 pictures of The Distressed Wombat Face) and a debate on Ghosts, Faeries and Demons. I will naturally be arguing on the side of the demons. Evil wins again! I will also be doing two Lexiglass events. (I made up the name, so I keep gleefully using it at every opportunity...) The Lexiglass Event July 11, 2009: Glasgow, Scotland, 3pm Borders Glasgow. 98 Buchanan Street, Glasgow, G1 3BA Signing and appearance with Cassandra Clare, who will be launching City of Glass in the UK The Irish Lexiglass Event with Cassandra Clare July 16th 6:30 PM Eason 40 Lower O'Connell Street, Dublin 1, Ireland Then there are some plans for appearances in the US. For a start, I will be attending Comic Con in San Diego, July 23rd to the 26th. Events there will be as follows: Friday, July 24 Panel 12:30-1:30 Future Fond Memories Room 3 Panelists: Michael Spradlin (KEEPER OF THE GRAIL: THE YOUNGEST TEMPLAR); Michael Reisman (SIMON BLOOM: THE OCTOPUS EFFECT ); Sarah Rees Brennan (THE DEMON’S LEXICON); James Owen (THE INDIGO KING); Mary Pearson (THE ADORATION OF JENNA FOX), P.J. Haarsma (THE WORM HOLE PIRATES OF ORBIS 3); and Alyson Noel (BLUE MOON: THE IMMORTALS). Moderator: Maryelizabeth Hart, Mysterious Galaxy 1:30 - 2:30 Signing in the convention's autograph area. The morning of Saturday the 25th, I will be signing in the Every Picture Tells a Story booth, exact time to be announced. And for the rest of Comic Con, I will probably be wandering around going 'Oooh, look, a Wonder Woman costume!' and being extremely happy about the weather, so come say hey to me! Now, I know quite a lot of writers called Sarah. It is, as I have pointed out to my mother while explaining my preference for 'Esmeralda,' a fairly common name. At this stage I believe Sarahs might be numerous enough to take over the world. Before we do that, though, we're having a Sarah Signing in New York. 1.00 pm - 3.00 pm, Sunday August 2nd. Books of Wonder, 18 West 18th Street, New York, NY 10011. Sarahs will include me, our fearless organiser Sarah MacLean (the Season), Sarah Cross (Dull Boy), Sarah Beth Durst (Ice, Into the Wild) and Sarah Ockler (Twenty Boy Summer) with more Sarahs to be announced! Other US appearances will be in early October, and the details will be enormously awesome, but I cannot tell you them yet! At all appearances I will have stuff like bookmarks, gel pens, cheery yet insane smiles, and little giveaways of the first chapter of The Demon's Covenant. And since this post has been all about announcements, something for the rest of you. I would tell a story about my life, but telling stories like 'Yesterday my flatmates found me sticking Post-its ON MY OWN FACE' is too shameful. So instead... ( Frequently Asked Questions about The Demon's Lexicon: GIGANTICALLY HUGE SPOILERS )If you have other questions, pray ask them and I will answer them! I will add to this post as I go. Current Mood: busyCurrent Music: kryptonite |
stepleton
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1:26a |
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qatar
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7:47a |
...as we boarded a Greyhound in Pittsburgh
I'm on a Greyhound in central PA, heading from Pittsburgh, where I just spent a week at a conference and then some friends' wedding, to New Jersey, where I'm beginning a week-long road trip with my friend Andrew. Thus I am in fact reenacting the route of the song quoted above. Woot! It's always fun to drop in on Pittsburgh once a year. It seems to be doing pretty well for itself. A couple nights ago I had dinner at a nice Ethiopian restaurant in a neighborhood I would once have been a little nervous to walk around at night. Way to go, East Liberty. The annual symposium for people from both campuses was good (my favorite so far) and the wedding was beautiful. It was attended by a variety of people who've lived in Doha over the last three years, so it was quite a reunion for me. It's also the first wedding I've ever attended where, after the groom/mother dance, the DJ said "alright, let's fill the dance floor" and the crowd actually complied. Trust Dave and Karen to have such fun friends! It's also the first wedding I've attended at which we danced to Promiscuous Girl. LOL. Weeks like this make me so grateful for the friends I've made in Qatar. Earlier this week one of my best friends was surprised to realize he knows all the other people I consider my closest friends, because they're all Doha people. (Well, that's not exactly what was said since I was too shy to say I consider him in that group, but it's what was meant.) The truth is that in the five years after I left college I made only one real friend. But in the five years since I moved to Qatar, my life has been overflowing with amazing people who I feel honored to know and privileged to spend time with. In many ways these have been the happiest five years of my life, and it's largely because of them. Well anyway, tomorrow I'm off to New York, and then the next day to Boston, and then around New Hampshire and Vermont a bit. This surprises people because I'm pretty well-traveled, but I've never been to either New York or New England before. I'm excited to see what all the fuss is about! |
| Sunday, July 5th, 2009 |
leon
|
10:52p |
Rummage sale
Caitlin posted pictures from her recent trip to New York on Facebook a few days ago, and among them was photo of an American Apparel rummage sale:
Transcribed almost directly, my thoughts immediately upon viewing the image went something like this:
An American Apparel rummage sale? That sounds like it’s right up my alley. Well, actually, no, I don’t know how comfortable I’d be rummaging around in bins of neon clothing with a bunch of dirty Williamsburg hipsters. All the hipsters are probably being judgmental and thinking that about each other, though. Or do hipsters even recognize their collective dirtiness ? Are they that self-aware? Even if they were, would that still stop them from rummaging? Maybe. They’d all probably just stand around the edges of the rummage sale furtively looking at each other. Wait, I don’t even think hipsters wear American Apparel anymore — it’s too mainstream. What the fuck’s a rummage sale anyway? New York is weird. I’m hungry. Where are the pita chips?
No wonder I can never fall asleep at night. I just have too much bullshit floating around in my brain.
Originally published at yoyoel.com. You can comment here or there. |
recsrainbow
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4:25p |
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| Saturday, July 4th, 2009 |
cdtwigg
|
12:17p |
Photoblogging: self-portraits
This is harder than it looks. "Wait; you're out of frame, could you move left a bit? Okay, don't move your head. Are you out of focus?" Full set here.    |
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bucy
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12:10p |
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| Friday, July 3rd, 2009 |
jcreed
|
7:16p |
I had a bit of an epiphany right now that I actually don't dislike writing at all. I dislike having to turn in bad writing, and this is sometimes the outcome when I write to deadlines. Pieces of chapter 4 make me just wanna puke. If I was given a billion years to keep rehashing how to present the ideas in my thesis until they were actually well-presented, then that would be great. Instead, I am a day or two overdue, holding onto a morass of conflicting notations and lemmas that just aren't pretty enough. That is negative one frillionth of how much time I would like to have. This is regrettable. |
matthewljacobs
|
5:53p |
Some good news from CTY
After the last few posts, I feel obligated to mention something awesome about CTY. Agreed Ball is still an afternoon activity. And nobody around here knows where it came from. I was schooling some newbie staff members in the Gospel of Jacob Wallace the other day. The RealCTY entry for "Agreedball" doesn't mention Jacob at all, or Alex. 'Tis a shame. And now...off to the first dance of the summer (in the ASFC, boo!) Current Mood:  agreeableCurrent Music: Sean Kingston - "Fire Burning on the Dance Floor" |
mdrnprometheus
|
11:04a |
Generic life update
Between internship and wedding planning, we've unsurprisingly been a bit busy. So far, internship's not too bad. I still get to go home by 5 unless I'm "short call", and even that sends me home around 6. First day of actual call will be Sunday, 8am-6pm shift. Even that's not too bad -- our inpatient unit looks like it'll either be full or have one bed free (maybe two; we have at least three manic patients who are likely to impulsively leave the hospital). So, two admissions plus a bunch of consults is the worst I could be doing over ten hours; I can live with that. Wedding planning also progressingly, slowly. Site reserved, registry complete, website up, invites in progress, hotel almost figured out, caterer in progress but annoying. DJ, photos, flowers, cake still not considered. tepui and burghbadger, we strongly recommend you consider eloping. Seattle continues to be excellent. We have had none of the torrential rain or baking heat that is apparently bothering the rest of the nation. It's about 70 degrees, almost always sunny, and there are many tasty plants starting to grow. Our neighborhood also had a lot of fruit, namely the Seattle gay pride festival, which consumed last weekend. Generally enjoyable, although (A) often overpriced and (B) seriously over-commercialized. They moved the parade Downtown a few years back, and I think this is maybe when the cool floats started being overshadowed by lame corporate and politician entries. I don't think we'll bother with the parade next year. Today is a holiday for me (yay, lazy specialty) so I get to catch up on reading and some data analyses. Evening is for caterer discussions, possible Costco run, hotel investigation, and grilling some of the stuff from the farmshare. Saturday is blissfully unstructured except for a resident BBQ. Life is good! Current Mood:  working |
phredward
|
9:18a |
Moving Day
Well, moving day is finally here. I'm only moving 4 blocks, but the chaos of not having all your stuff upended from its usual location is proving stressful. |
| Thursday, July 2nd, 2009 |
matthewljacobs
|
6:21p |
No BLT?!
The latest in a string of CTY outrages: Starting this year, nobody is allowed to take off their pants for BLT. Something bad is going to happen...this current administration is just going overboard on the rules because there's pressure from Baltimore to make Lancaster more like all the other CTY sites. The students are not going to stand for it. Frankly, I'm not sure which side I'm on anymore. Current Mood:  aggravated |
bluealvarez
|
10:08a |
1st Thursdays tonight!
 If you're near JP tonight, please come down and keep us company at 1st Thursdays!  Inside Curtis Hall 20 South St. Jamaica Plain, MA 02130  Boston Handmade members will be there selling beautiful handcrafted items, and there will be specials going on at all the stores and restaurants along Centre and South streets. 5 - 8 pm, and some places later (JP Licks until 12 am!). Come down and check it out! |
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