the frig blig

I built a wooden frame to enclose a 44″ x 7″ panoramic photo of a Florida cypress swamp. While the end result looks very nice, the big lesson learned from this project is: don’t use bevelled moulding when making frames. It causes problems making the 45 degree angle corner cuts.

Suzan and I picked out some mahogany moulding at the RE Store which works nicely with the muted greens and browns of the swamp. The photo of Morris Bridge in Tampa, when it was flooded in 2003, was taken by Doug Rathke.

The frig blig runs on software called WordPress. At the bottom of their website I noticed the following statement: “code is poetry”.

Please. I have to take issue with that.

Code is a series of instructions. Poetry is “a form of art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its ostensible meaning” (Wikipedia).

Perhaps some code may seem particularly elegant or even beautiful to coders (see Mel, for a nice example). Perhaps a few script or source code files may have poetic qualities. Poetry is big enough to encompass that.

But generally speaking, code is human-readable computer instructions and poetry is human-to-human communication, usually portraying an experience, not instructions.

It’s fine that coders should be proud of their work, but calling it poetry is going too far. Code is code; poetry is poetry. Learn the difference and appreciate each for what it is.

On the other hand, if poetry is considered moribund,
#define code poetry
would be a huge shot in the arm for the genre.

Suzan and I just flew in from SLC and boy are our arms tired (please excuse that little joke from my childhood). We went to help N celebrate her 50th birthday with 50 or 60 other close friends at a ski resort in the Wasatch mountains. The party was a blast, dancing fueled by DJ D, plenty of food and drink, a roaring fire, crayon art, and so on. It was a sleepover, lucky for us. During our stay we also visited two other couples we call friends. While the weather was sunny in the 70 degree farenheit range, and the mountain scenes were awesome, it’s the strength and depth of the friendships that make SLC a great town. Here’s a picture right outside the door of the cabin we stayed in at Brighton:

When Attorney General Gonzales and President Bush say “mistakes were made” regarding the federal prosecutors’ firings, what they mean is that they got caught. Breaking the law and busting the separation of federal powers is not and has never been their concern. I’m interested in seeing how far this goes, how deeply the president is implicated and if Gonzales is forced to resign. (Remember Bush’s famous “Brownie, you’re doing a heckuva job” quote?)

40 years after Star Trek’s first season, many of what were presented as futuristic technologies have become commonplace: faster-than-light space travel, photon torpedos, and communicators. Well OK, just communicators. But the technology I want to discuss here is — “Beam me up, Scotty” — the transporter.

Transporter technology is designed to move (transport) a physical object from one location to another, seemingly instantaneously, without use of a vehicle. On the show the device required an operator to pull a lever, and during the period between the lever’s move from the top to bottom position the objects (usually starship personnel) would flicker out of existence at the source location and flicker into existence at the target location (set using GPS coordinates).

The problem here is that it’s impossible for matter to exist in more than one location at the same time (isn’t it?). It seems that if transporter technology were to actually work it would have to be a quantum phenomena, just as electrons move in discreet quanta in nuclear physics. So there would be no flickering at both locations; the object(s) would simply blink out of existence at the source and blink into existence at the target.

Besides, what would happen if an object or person got stuck halfway between the source and destination — suppose for instance the operator was distracted and the lever got stuck in the middle? Messy.

Portraying the transporter as quantum technology would have robbed the series of a special effect, so perhaps a production consideration overrode the technical requirements. That’s entertainment I suppose.

As popularly reported, yesterday’s conviction of Scooter Libby lends credence to the theory that the administration, and President Bush specifically, knowingly lied about Iraq’s WMD program in order to make the case for an invasion. It occurs to me that this in turn should be useful to Lt. Wataba’s retrial defense, scheduled for pretrial motions May 20. But since the court-martial is heard by a military judge this might not be as useful as it could be in an ordinary courtroom.

Last night after the wedding party I experienced the a-frames at the alibi room downstairs. I’ve been trying to catch a live show since I heard their first CD several years ago but for one reason or another it’s never worked until last night. Excited was I. I got a next-to-front row spot prepared to rock and was not disappointed.

Since what’s-his-name coined ‘wall of sound’ in the 1960s, I spent a few minutes trying to come up with another, better phrase for the a-frames sound… industrial art noise; post-retro-modern; broccoli brick sound; steel-n-concrete sound; firehose of nails; wall of noise; para-rock; fuzzy bunny sound etc.

Today I spent all day in bed nursing a migrane which generates a better phrase: migrane music. The a-frames gave me a fucking migrane plus I’m half-deaf to boot. How good is that?!

They just played one set but it was loud, hard and fine. I recognized about half a dozen songs from the first CD, including ’surveillance’ played by request and way heavier than the recorded version. Making the ambiance weird was a video of backyard songbirds projected on the side wall. Them birds be jerky…which may have influenced a dance step or two.

Our friends A & B got married on the Fremont Troll tonite in front of a small but enthusiastic circle of friends. There were candles, and group song, and rain. CEG performed the ceremony. The couple used each other’s backs to sign the paperwork. The troll and rain — how Seattle is that? Everyone walked back to A & B’s apartment for potluck (we brought blackeyes and grits) and drinks. In fact they’re still there partying…Suzan and I were among the first to leave. This was a secret ceremony because certain people must never know it happened.

Congratulations y’all!

Floating Leaves (FL) is a tea house in Ballard. Wednesday night is ‘Game Night’ and I often stop by for a game of go. Last night I met CEG there and had a fun game, which I lost after failing to kill his stones which invaded my center moyo. It was an exciting fight nonetheless. T (another FL go player) mentioned that he just bought a 24′ sailboat in Everett and extended an invitation to CEG and me. This is a raincoat made from palm fronds, on the wall in FL. They were largely replaced with vinyl wear, but are experiencing new popularity as decoration in Asia according to proprietress S.