We have always been at war with Oceania.

Been a while since I blogged. More this weekend, promise. Lots and lots of good stuff happening.

I don’t follow many comics or webcomics these days. Over the years I’ve been enamored of ones like Sinfest (fully likable, manga inspired, vaguely religious) and Penny Arcade (a little too inside-baseball, all about gaming and nerds, not my thing, but the ferocity and velocity of the humor can be pretty great, though the language can get to be too extreme). I also like the Perry Bible Fellowship (which I can only recommend if you can appreciate deeply twisted and cynical comics that come in a nearly infinite variety of styles, it can be a bit too adult as well). The most successful comic for me is not even a comic, but an animation, and that’s HomeStarRunner, which I consider just about a perfect use of the web for fun entertainment, and I truly appreciate that it’s family friendly. All that said, my favorite lately is Cat and Girl which works for me graphically, simple while still being fun, and sometimes deeply smart, even profoundly so. Check out the latest one: “Che and Castro were the Steve and Eydie of Socialist Cuba”, — and the silly title is not even the best part! here’s a sample two frames, not funny, but a taste of the kind of stuff that gets inserted into what’s ostensibly a silly webcomic:

I like erudition and philosophy mixed in with my silly kartoon hijinks. Cat and Girl delivers.

As we enter Advent, the season prior to Christmas, the title of one of the bootlegs of Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention performances comes to mind.  The recording was made in Stockholm in 1967. The title is “‘Tis The Season To Be Jelly.” Here’s the words of the introduction to the rollicking song “King Kong,” spoken by Frank:

The name of this song is King Kong. It’s the story of a very large gorilla who lived in the jungle. And he was doing okay until some Americans came by and thought that they would take him home with them. They took him to the United States, and they made some money by using the Gorilla, then they killed him.

Leave it to Frank to summarize that story in a sardonic, cynical, funny and sad way.

In 1967 I did not exist.

I have a lot of blogging in me today, I think. It’s a windy and interesting day.

“Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our Traditions, ever reminding us to place principles before personalities.” – AA Traditions

Time with the kids went into overtime today, fires in Moorpark have meant that school is out for Moorpark tomorrow. Instant 3-day weekend for the kids!
We did find the moment to decorate the Christmas tree and decorate sugar cookies. They may (almost) all be teens, but they enjoy Christmas… they just enjoy some ironic distance from it as well.

p.s: I like eggnog and 7-up and cognac. (ratio: 6:5:1)

Kids off tomorrow, but not me. Sleep soon.

Honestly? I was pretty sad when I heard from Leah that she was headed to Seattle for Thanksgiving. With my family all elsewhere, and few contacts here in the area, and with very short notice, the upshot was that I’d be alone on Thanksgiving. My traveling with her was out of the question as I had previously committed to working on Friday.

So I sulked for about a day and resolved to make it the best solo Thanksgiving ever. And you know, it was!

Thanksgiving Eve I took Leah to the Burbank Airport. Traffic was fine from our place, but on the opposite side of the freeway was daunting traffic. I dropped her off and left her in the hands of the fine folks of the Transportation Security Administration. I left the airport and went and hung out at Fry’s. Fry’s Burbank is themed like a 1950’s Martian Invasion, which is neither here nor there, but it adds to the ambiance. So I walked about, considering Christmas and watching kids play Guitar Hero. So that killed maybe an hour, then I made my way to the Burbank Barnes & Noble. There I bought Scott McCloud’s latest opus on comics: Making Comics. So far, it’s excellent.

Another hour killed, I made my way back home. I bought groceries for the next day, presuming that everything would be closed the next day. Actually, the posted hours on the local Albertson’s was that they’d be open Thanksgiving to the early afternoon. Still and all, I made my purchases. I did pretty well: A 10 pound turkey (their smallest, I avoided the 45 pound monsters), a prepared sweet potato pie, prepared cranberry dressing by Boston Market, fresh broccoli, lettuce, roma tomatoes, blue cheese dressing, and for dessert: the Cars DVD. I went home and hit the sack. It had been a long work day. I got a text message later from Leah in Las Vegas, and hit the sack. She arrived VERY late at SEATAC. You can catch her own story of the journey after her landing over here at Three Car Rides (1 of 3). I got a text message when she arrived but didn’t get up. I slept.

I awoke pretty early, focused hard on the fact that today, there was no work to be done. I blogged briefly, and set to cooking.

The first thing I did was start the turkey. I have cooked a turkey before, many years ago. I’ve seen it done several ways. Some say the brine method is the best. Some say the paper bag method works best. I went with following the instructions on the packaging. I rinsed and dried it off. I set it up on a shallow roasting pan.

Then I made up some stuffing. Leah had previously saved out some bread for stuffing, which I used. I used a recipe she had used a few weeks back. Problem: it called for celery, and we had none. Being alone, I made the executive decision to simply use onions to replace the celery. It very aromatic. Yes, I cried as I chopped it. I sauteed them, mixed the recipe up, and stuffed the bird. I finished that up at 11am. My cook time was 3 1/2 hours. I got the notion to see a movie. So I hopped in the car to see what might be playing. Sadly, no movies started that early, so my car trip was for naught. Still, it was kind of fun to see everything but the food stores shut down. The groceries stores were BUSTLING.

I got home, and put in Cars. I quite enjoyed it. I have never managed to see it in the theater and I really enjoyed it. As I watched, I also worked on peeling potatoes. There must be mashed potatoes. (Flash forward: the thing I didn’t do was make any gravy, which is a little sad in retrospect, but I didn’t really miss it). I peeled and washed maybe 5 medium sized potatoes and set them cooking.

As the end of turkey cook time neared, I put on the broccoli to steam. I also sliced tomatoes and tossed a salad with the iceberg lettuce I had bought. Humble, but tasty. I also snuck some blue cheese and tomatoes. Blue cheese appeals to my palate in the strongest way. It’s awfully high in calories, but the taste knocks me out.

Oh, I forgot! I also bought some rolls, a French bread, and a ham. The French bread I didn’t touch, but I heated the ham and had little sandwiches as the turkey cooked and Cars played. It was tasty.

For the last 30 minutes of cooking the turkey, I removed the foil. It looked PERFECT. All but the top of the bird was a not too-done golden brown.

Cars ended and I put on the on-demand latest episode of The Wire. I had seen it before, but it’s so darn good, it bears watching as I try and keep up with the Baltimore slang and plot developments.

I assembled my plate. Turkey white and dark, a Turkey leg, broccoli lightly salted, a blue cheese salad, stuffing from inside the bird, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce. It was entirely great, and thoroughly enjoyable.

There’s a concept called “taking care of yourself” that doesn’t get much play. It has to do with treating yourself the way you would want others to treat you. On Thanksgiving I truly did that. I think previous incarnations of myself would have indulged in self-pity and loneliness. Instead, I viewed the day as an adventure — an opportunity. As a result, it was a great day. I missed my wife, it could have been different, maybe better, maybe worse, but bottom line, I had a great deal to be thankful for, and I’m glad it turned out so well.

There’s an affirmation I quite like, and it’s a hard one to hear and understand and accept, but it’s apt: I trust that the universe is unfolding as it should. I admit that that trust sometimes comes with great difficulty. Sometimes the trust doesn’t come at all.

Still and all, there’s the universe, unfolding and unfolding, like an infinite origami trick. It’s quite beautiful if you can manage to immerse yourself in it.

There’s a lingering scent of smoke in my nose. I can’t quite tell if that scent is leftover from having driven within 15 miles of the Moorpark Fires, or whether that scent is just as present and strong in Camarillo.

It’s discomfiting.

Douglas Adams has an essay in Last Chance to See, his foray into environmental writing, about Rhinos. I think it’s Rhinos, anyway. He describes their powerful olfactory senses, and that their sense of smell allows them to “time travel” because of the way scent propagates, they might be smelling something that passed near many minutes ago. Their perception, then, is not in sync with time, so their conception of the world around them, being largely blind, is based on this older information.

I can’t possibly do it justice, but smoke in my nose makes me remember that essay and how much I liked it.

• Lego Programming
  Never a silver bullet, ever.
  (tags: programming software development)

A moving story. Potter’s Journal: Rebirth in Spring City

I know, I have more to say, but honestly, Joe the Potter has great stuff these days. His pottery makes great Christmas gifts, too.

Potter’s Journal: Firing with Lee
Yesterday I arose at 5 am and made my way to the kiln that Lee and I had loaded the night before. The temperature outside was hanging around ten degrees F. That was up from the five degrees of the past several mornings. Lee, always looking out for me, got me a set of insulated overalls that I gratefully wore. I prayed as I kindled the fire in the main firebox. I always do that, asking that the fire goes well and that the pots will carry the spirit of this fire into the homes and the lives of the people who use them. Sometimes if someone I know is sick or in particular need I’ll dedicate the fire to them. Each firing is a ceremony, each stick of wood going into the kiln with a prayer for someone. The smoke that goes up the stack carries the prayer aloft.

Leah’s body rejects nose piercing: The Nose Knows?

There’s always next time. She had it pierced before she knew me, and if I were a betting man I’d say she’ll do it again sometime. Maybe tomorrow, maybe in 15 years. But she likes them.
For a long time I thought the appearance of my mate reflects on me, and my estimation of myself was in relation to that. No longer. I used to reject the idea of such a piercing in my mate for just that reason. Yeah, it’s disordered thinking to base one’s own self-image on the appearance of someone else. Luckily that’s not my style anymore.

Interestingly, one of the few dress code rules at my current employer is “no facial piercings,” so I have an excuse not to be confronted with an impulse to have one.

I thought it looked really lovely on her, for the record. I usually don’t find such things my cup of tea, but it looked really great on her. Then again, look at the canvas it was placed on. 😉

Things are really hard, yo. Even when they’re really good.

Another day. Lovely one I think and affirm.

Onward.

joephone: @fry.s
leahphone: But r there flies?
joephone: No flies but you are a prize
leahphone: The space between us our love does not disguise
joephone: And now my face a smile can not hide

I had not heard this news.

FrontPage:
After nine years of being an award-winning Web authoring tool, FrontPage will be discontinued in late 2006. We will continue to serve the diverse needs of our existing FrontPage customers with the introduction of two brand-new application building and Web authoring tools using the latest technologies: Office SharePoint Designer 2007 for the enterprise information workers and Expression Web for the professional Web designer.

In 2004, Bruce Sterling spoke at the Long Now foundation on the topic: The Singularity: Your Future as a Black Hole. One sequence jumped out of me when listening to the audio because of the very funny at once insightful and dismissive definition of Science Fiction he cites. Before this part he’s talking about the sheer incomprehensibility of what it means to actually have a singularity occur, and how despite this incomprehensibility, science fiction writers still manage to use singularities in their writing:

When you think about it it’s a great place for science fiction novel but makes very little sense otherwise. “It’s because we had a singularity blow throgh here, that’s why” – it came and like ripped everything apart and it’s just like it’s left pieces of itself wandering around bending the plot any way I want. Kind of like the Gods on the plains of Troy.

Why would Science fiction stop to this? Why are they deploying this grand mathematical notion as like, a source of plot coupons?

Well I’ll explain this to you, and if you learn nothing else about science fiction you need to know this. This is the classic Peter Nicholls definition of science fiction from 1976. It’s very difficult to define science fiction. Many people have tried. Okay…

“Sci-fi can be succinctly defined (I’m quoting him) as speculation, whether based on established scientific facts, or, on logical pseudofacts, consistent with the framework of the fiction in question, involving smelly, green, pimply aliens furiously raping or eating or both beautiful naked bare-breasted chicks, covering them in slime, red oozing living slime, dribbling from every horrific orifice squeezing out between bulbous pulpy lips onto the onto the sensuous velvety skin writhing sweaty dripping blood and bruised whips brandished by giant blonde with vast biceps androids, and written in the gothic mode.”

That just rocks so hard.

Really funny moment.

In the past three months I’ve been making a concerted effort to make better use of my time and energy. For a very long time now I feel as though my energy has been unfocused and ill-spent.

One of the large issues for me has been the incredible amount of email I receive. A big part of that was the many email newsletters I subscribe to. Well, was subscribed to. For the past month or two whenever I get one of those emails, I stop and consider whether it materially contributes something to my well being, financial well being, friendships, or family life. If no, then POOF, it must be unsubscribed from.

It’s been a great boon to me to not have a steady stream of promotional material and news come to my email inbox. Having items not insistently demand my attention has been wonderful.

Another issue I’ve had is keeping up with San Diego. I love San Diego very dearly. My favorite place on the planet is La Jolla Cove. I have much family there. But being the responsible party for my San Diego sites [1,2,3] was a side drain on my time that was part of a cohort of projects that diluted my focus. So they had to go. Last month I was able to sell them. I was able to make some money for them, which was quite useful, but more, they went into hands that will continue them in a form I feel and think will be positive.

These are two factors which have left more time for me. And a nice chance to rediscover the temporary nature of some projects. It’s also great to take stock of the things I’m doing and be able to evaluate why it is I’m doing them. Mind you, some projects one can’t simply sell or abandon.

One thing I’ve done is started reading RSS and Atom feeds again. I use Google Reader to organize and read blogs and anything with syndicated content. This is a great way to keep track of things, but to be “the decider” when it comes to when I look at them. I organize them into categories: ours (blogs leah and I work on or maintain, flickr feeds of ours, etc), people (blogs in a voice more or less by one person), writers.laish (blogs by people in leah’s nascent writer’s group), forsale (craigslist feeds for “for sale” items), group (blogs like metafilter or boingboing, which don’t really have a single person at the helm), jobhunt (feeds for job postings), links (link blogs like waxy’s links and larger link sites like fark), and sandiegobloggers (a holdover which i don’t beat myself up about if i don’t read, there are many). For several months I simply gave up reading blogs or keeping up with feeds, because I was so busy with work, but I ended up even more frustrated because there were people and information sources that I ended up checking anyway, and doing it ad hoc took more time than simply reading them in an RSS reader. I tried bloglines for about a minute. And I had been using NetNewsWire, which is great software, but is not nearly as mobile as I am. When Google Reader got good recently, I jumped in and have not looked back. It’s all very “Web 2.0” of me, I’m sure.

Checking on blogs can be every bit as compulsive as checking email, but having one-stop shopping for my reading (with the exception of blogs without feeds: I’m looking at you Tom B!) is great. It allows me to scan with a different kind of emphasis.

That emphasis, and thinking about that emphasis, has been a chance to look at what I enjoy, and why I enjoy what I enjoy.

So I’ve been reading and watching with a more discriminating eye.

I already talked about Cat and Girl the other day. Now I’m going to talk about two other folks who make me happy to read. And moreover, who are making me smarter.

The first is from the same comics and animation category Cat and Girl come from. It’s animating genius John Kricfalusi. I think I discovered his blog either via Coop or BoingBoing, either way, he’s great. His blog, titled “All Kinds of Stuff” is really rather focused on animation, animation history and illustration technique. Just in the past two days he’s had two great posts: first, here’s an excellent IM dialogue about a copy of an illustration — I’m not actively illustrating, but I am an avid doodler. I love to doodle in meetings, and I just know that the drawing jones is going to hit me real soon now. And here’s a post about a background painter from Hanna Barbera that includes wonderful commentary about the history of HB cartoons. Now, John K is the man behind Ren & Stimpy, which despite the fact my wife does not like them, and the fact that I typically despise potty humor, really caught my eye when they came out in the 1990s. Much of what John K does these days is too ribald for my tastes, but he remains a helluvan animator. The thing that really stands out to me is that he’s really articulate about what he likes, what he does not like, and why. Here’s a brief history of Hanna Barbera:

1958 – adventurous, radical, experimental, fun. Every cartoon feels different.

to 1960 – still very professional yet more conservative (leaving out the first season of the Flintstones which I will talk about later)

1962 – conservative, bland and repetitive, HB starts recruiting young inexperienced artists who never animated.

1965 – ugly xerox lines, Iwao Takamoto reluctantly imitating Ed’s design style, Saturday morning executive interference.

1967- Iwao and his crew starts to design harder to animate characters in a pseudo 60’s Disney style-which are impossible to animate well with a low budget.

Gang cartoons start which further hampers the chances to animate well.

1969 – Scooby Doo-absolute crap. Ugly design, sloppy amateur execution, not written by cartoonists anymore-the ugliest BGs ever. The end of the world.

I really appreciate the curmudgeonly aspects of that, but more, I really love that John K. points out the stuff he LOVES.

That matters, it’s inspirational, and keeps me coming back for more. Okay, I’ll point out another post of his, here’s a quote:

Without contrast or punctuation you have monotony. Controlling contrasts is very difficult and I’d say even impossible for weaker artists or actors or writers. Today’s prime time cartoons are extremely monotonous because they have no punctuation or contrasts in any of the creative aspects of them. Everything just drones along at the same pace, volume and evenly spaced design. Nothing is more important than anything else. It all just lays there and expects you to weed through the morass to find what the entertaining parts are.

I love that. He also includes copious examples of what he likes and does not. “Show, don’t tell” they tell you in the screenwriting courses. Maybe that’s true for blogs sometimes as well.

Speaking of show and tell, the other expert I have come across is Douglas Crockford. With zero doubt, he is the most articulate speaker on JavaScript I have every heard. I came across him because I subscribe to the Yahoo User Interface Blog. As far as I can tell Crockford has no blog. But because of the YUI blog, I found him. There are two multipart videos worth your time here: “An Inconvenient API: The Theory of the Dom” and “Advanced JavaScript”

For me, these are the first articulations of some of the oddnesses of JavaScript — and how she is spoke — that I’ve ever read. The first set of videos blew my mind, because they articulated, simply and effectively, what constitutes best practice in JavaScript. As I study object oriented programming, and come to understand more fully, the insights are that much more incredible.

I just went looking for a Crockford website and blog, and found his blog and his site. Oh, and check this out: javascript.crockford.com and holy cow! He has a great little intro essaylet called “JavaScript: The World’s Most Misunderstood Programming Language” here’s an excerpt:

The Java- prefix suggests that JavaScript is somehow related to Java, that it is a subset or less capable version of Java. It seems that the name was intentionally selected to create confusion, and from confusion comes misunderstanding. JavaScript is not interpreted Java. Java is interpreted Java. JavaScript is a different language.

JavaScript has a syntactic similarity to Java, much as Java has to C. But it is no more a subset of Java than Java is a subset of C. It is better than Java in the applications that Java (fka Oak) was originally intended for.

JavaScript was not developed at Sun Microsystems, the home of Java. JavaScript was developed at Netscape. It was originally called LiveScript, but that name wasn’t confusing enough.

The -Script suffix suggests that it is not a real programming language, that a scripting language is less than a programming language. But it is really a matter of specialization. Compared to C, JavaScript trades performance for expressive power and dynamism.

It looks like there’s lots to like there.

I’m simmering with ideas.

It’s a great day.

My post asking about MVC was updated.

When I was a teenager, these men were my heroes. Byrne is gawky, nervous, perhaps not entirely there, and a bit spooky. Letterman is a lovable jerk, always projecting a detached, superior irony.

I saw myself in them at the time. What does it mean that my teenage self (age 13-17 mostly, and beyond) it meant for me to be an intense fan of a neurotic and a smartass? I leave that as an exercise for the reader.

And I’m not kidding about them being heroes. For about 10 years I collected every magazine with interviews with them. Those magazines are in the garage now, in plastic bags. Perhaps I’ll sell them on eBay.

Pre-internet, being a fan meant always being on the hunt for such materials. It meant scouring tv guide to see who was on when, and keeping an ear on the radio for news of who was touring when. I visited magazine stands, bookshops, record stores. I was a collector. Now such obscura is a few keystrokes away on google or youtube.

Tower Records, touchstone of my youth, is bankrupt. World Book & News on Cahuenga in Hollywood, which continues to be magazine mecca for me, is too difficult to park at. I’ve tried to go about three times in the past year, and each time the parking is too terrible to contemplate stopping. C’est la vie.
I don’t know what I expected of the future, but here we are.

All these moments, lost in time, like tears in rain. Only not lost, they’re preserved on youtube and eBay.

Look on my works ye mighty, and despair.

Previously.

One of the great cliches of Christmastime is the airing and re-airing of It’s a Wonderful Life. Jim Kunstler, writer of the excellent Geography of Nowhere he of with a blog name that is not safe for work.  writes about the parallel universe vision of George Bailey’s Pottersville, and how it bears a close resemblance to Las Vegas.

Clusterf*** Nation by Jim Kunstler : Not So Wonderful
At a crucial point in the story, Clarence the guardian angel takes George Bailey on a tour of Bedford Falls as-if-George-had-never-been-born. Only the town is named Pottersville now. Main Street is lined with gin mills, strip clubs, and dance halls instead of wholesome banks, groceries, and pharmacies. (Oddly, casinos are absent, because in 1946 we lacked the vision to see how truly demoralized our nation could get.) Prostitutes ply the busy sidewalks. Now the weirdest thing is that Pottersville is depicted as a busy, bustling, lively place — the exact opposite of what main streets all over America really became, thanks to George Bailey’s efforts — a wilderness of surface parking, from sea to shining sea, with WalMart waiting on the edge of every town like Moloch poised to inhale the last remaining vapors of America’s morale. Frank Capra could imagine vibrant small towns turning their vibrancy in the direction of vice — but he couldn’t imagine them forsaken and abandoned, with the shop fronts boarded up and the sidewalks empty, which was the true tragic destiny of all the Bedford Falls in our nation.

Most ironically, today America’s favorite main street town, Las Vegas, is Pottersville writ large, and most Americans see absolutely nothing wrong with it. How wonderful is that?

Kunstler is an alarmist. He explains America as a morass of gasoline dependency, and when the price and availability of oil reach crisis point American suburbia will implode in a way that will truly undermine our culture. I have hope his predictions are incorrect, although his explications of how suburbia evolved, and how genuinely toxic it can be are powerful food for thought.

When we lived in San Diego, we lived in a house built in 1896. We were walking distance to a Church, and to a corner store. We now rent what my father describes as a McMansion, built in the 1980s. We don’t have a Church within walking distance. No corner store either. The 1896 house was far more humane in many ways. Our current home is car-dependent. It assumes cars. Without cars, it does not work.

Recipe for disaster? JHK’s work predicts an end to easy gasoline, and then cars, and then, a catastrophic end to suburbia. Is it plausible? It makes logical sense. But is the first part of the prediction realistic? An end to easy gasoline?

I leave that as an exercise for the reader.

I kid you not, this morning on my commute to work I saw the Oscar Meyer Wienermobile travelling south on the 101 around Newbury Park, California.
It was a delightfully surreal moment for me.

I think I mentioned that the San Diego web sites are no longer in my hands. Well, here’s yet more evidence that my letting go was the right move — WebSanDiego.org is set for more changes.

Very exciting stuff.

He cracks me up, despite myself.

Explained.

two years ago leah and i got married. There’s even some audio. And more.

(the best kind of) ONWARD.

Laundry almost done. Presents almost packed. Cards almost mailed. Almost almost almost. What better thing to do than to blog?!?

Doug Welch points out what could be pretty interesting — wergamers.com. In person gaming. Why, we could call it, an arcade! Seriously though, this looks really cool. The boys might dig it too. Lately they really love playing NFL Street.

LAVoice.org has an article on where to buy a bike. I’m *this* close to buying one. For real.

My brother-in-law took my niece to be on the radio. Check it out.

Ouch! The Spider of Doom — that’s more or less how I hosed sandiegobloggers for those months. Luckily, now it’s in much better hands. The Daily WTF is now a must read for me. Such wonderful folly.

Have a good thought for missewon, willya?

I’m not sure I agree with the list, but it’s not a bad list: 50 Greatest Cartoons.

While we’re on lists, how about Movie Musicals? I grew up on Fiddler on the Roof and Sound of Music, myself. I am SO much older and wiser. Telling you what to do..

There’s folding to do, dude.

Possibly more over on the vox.

1. Merry Christmas!

2. Back from Utah. Great trip.

3. James Brown and Gerald Ford died? That sucks.

4. Earthquake in Asia knocks out lots of internet? That’s technically interesting and somewhat sad.

5. Email and work to catch up on.

6. Wait, we didn’t send the Christmas cards? (That was my job, and we’re way behind, sports fans)

7. Love and Peace to all you all out there.

8. Seriously, what’d I miss?

I loved Americart at $15/month when it was through Pair.com.

The pricing has changed now, and the minimum is now at $40/month. I dislike this change immensely.

Any Americart workalikes out there that are at a lower rate? I think it’s time to move away from Americart, much as I have loved recommending them to clients.

More than doubling prices SUCKS. It feels like extortion. And I have to pass this cost along to my clients.

Yuck.

Update: I got the lower rate for one year for a client. I will be looking at alternatives.

Thought of the day from AskMoses.com:

Peace
If you are not at peace with others, examine if you are at peace with yourself.