guh » Random Prime

Mac Man!

ken-ichi — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 02:11:13 +0000

I’m sitting at the coffee shop, outside, under the awning, typing on my laptop, late afternoon light slanting down the street backlighting the sycamores, readers, talkers, workers surrounding me, when a large cloud of smoke envelopes my head. Pipe smoke.

“Hey, Mac Man!”

I look up, and this man, probably in his sixties, aviator shades pushing into BluBlocker territory, is looking at me, smiling. Smoke plumes out of a pipe clenched tightly in his broad grin. “Hey, Mac Man!”

The sun shines behind him, through the cloud of pipe smoke, so I squint, trying to discern if he is, in fact, talking to me, and what, exactly, he is talking about. “Wha?” I manage, eyebrow cocked, lower right lip fish-hooked in dumbfounded stupefaction.

“Mac. Macintosh. You know. I hate having to use that . . . Windows, when I’m out here on vacation.”

Ah. My computer. “. . . yeah.”

“That’s a . . . PowerBook . . . five? Yeah. With the Mac X OS. Tiger.”

“Yup. It’s a good computer.”

“Yeah.” He begins walking away, but turns back. “I hear 11 is coming, but,” he shrugs, “Pshh!”

Cinematic Genre Fiction, Activate!

ken-ichi — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 06:56:59 +0000

Just thought I’d note that there are currently two excellent movies of the science fiction and fantasy persuasion in theaters right now. The first is Alfonso Cuaron’s Children of Men, adapted from the P.D. James novel of the same name. This is a great non-cutesy dystopia, a telling that quickly enveloped me into its reality without obsessing over itself too much. Harrowing long takes, terrifyingly arbitrary violence, and moments of true levity just make for an amazing experience. Not for the faint of heart, though.

The same could be said of Pan’s Labyrinth, a semi-fantasy movie concerning a young girl trying to navigate between a world of fauns and fairies and the unrelenting cruelty of the Spanish Civil War, in particular her monstrous military stepfather. This one by Guilermo del Toro, another Mexican director, but with more horror than art housey chops than Cuaron. This movie is definitely in the vein of Miyazaki, as bizarre unreality weaves itself through the commonplace. Like Children of Men, this is a very violent movie, but while the violence of CoM is terrifying for its arbitrariness, Pan’s Labyrinth often seems to linger on the expectation of intentional violence. I guess that’s part of what makes the former good hard scifi and the latter good solid fantasy: Pan’s Labyrinth has evil people, while CoM just has us gone to hell.

Anyway, see them both! They are both excellent.

Propagate, you fiendish memes, and leave me be!

ken-ichi — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 05:08:45 +0000

YouTube is too full of awesomeness, both old and new. But if you really want to blow some time, you need to play.

Genomic History

ken-ichi — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 19:15:23 +0000

It would be cool to visualize a genome as a timeline, where distinct loci can be seen in the order they are thought to have originated, almost like a wiki page timeline or a sequence of diffs. Just reading about remnants of old viruses that remain in the human genome (and recent efforts to resurrect them). I like the idea of the genome as a story about the species.

How to do things . . . in Japan

ken-ichi — Sun, 06 Aug 2006 05:22:52 +0000

These are the best things in the history of everything. Sometimes Japan is just werid. And other times, Japan is the greatest nation on Earth.

It has come to this

ken-ichi — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 04:24:58 +0000

A scene from this afternoon: Ken-ichi is at a farmer’s market. Ken-ichi carefully chooses a bunch of basil (silently but emphatically pronouncing it BAH-zill) with the fewest flowers, selects a small, youngish globe egg plant, and a few heirloom tomatos (silently but emphatically pronouncing them toh-MAH-toze), and brings them to the register. He hands over the eggplant and tomatoes separately, knowing they cost different amounts per pound, and shows his basil, which he knows is priced by the bunch. Ken-ichi packs his vegetables into various pockets and chambers in his backpack, and walks away. The guy at the register calls out, “Uh, sir?” Ken-ichi continues, assuming, as always, that people could not possibly be talking to him. “Sir?” Ken-ichi turns, and the guy is looking at him, holding a plastic bag. Ken-ichi takes a step or two back, and says, “No thanks, I don’t need a bag.” Guy says, “No, you forgot to pay.” Ken-ichi pauses, sheepishly mutters a lie about long days, and smiles apologetically.

Stupid is as stupid does, and stupid does some prety stupid things.

Rap Map

ken-ichi — Sat, 27 May 2006 01:42:49 +0000

So I was listening to E-40 and discussing hyphy and regional styles of rap with a co-worker the other day, when I came up with a potentailly interesting idea: if you georeferenced the lyrics of all rap albums released over the past year and performed some kind of linguistic analysis, parsing on distinctive words, grammar, enunciation, etc., could you distinguish different regional styles without knowning them beforehand? I think it would make for some cool maps. You’d need access to some kind of lyrics database, and you’d need to associate each set of lyrics with the rapper’s city. Not sure how one would parse the data, but maybe regression trees? Neural net? Something a little more supervised? This conversation also brought to light how phenomenally distant I am from the world of hip-hop. I first heard about hyphy on public radio, and I only just learned to spell it on Wikipedia.

Seeing yourself in nature

ken-ichi — Mon, 15 May 2006 00:14:51 +0000

I had a co-worker take this picture of me processing a rattlesnake the other day, but when I got home I was surprised to find myself smiling. I find the photos people take of themselves with animals fascinating, and often disturbing. What does it mean when you have some one take a picture of you with the fish you just caught or the deer you just shot? Pride? Relief? Accomplishment? Dominance? Control? Although I can’t speak to the intent of these kinds of photos, their impression on me as a viewer is usually one of disrespect towards nature, a personal show of power over the world around us.

Partly, I’m smiling in this photo out of fascination for a marvelous creature, and relief over getting it into the tube (not always trivial), but I don’t deny there may be undertones of power and control. And why did I ask to have it taken? Ostensibly to show friends and family (and, uh, the whole internet, I guess) what I do for a living, but am I also showing off? Am I at least a little proud that I can render this dangerous animal completely helpless?

Photos are so strange in this way. They carry such immense credibility, all this documentary weight that we (well, I) so rarely question what we’re seeing. What happened before and after? is this one tiny moment indiciative of the larger event? What are the effects of angle and composition? Maybe someone just handed me this snake and I’m smiling at some joke. I know, this is all Scepticism 101, but, you know, I’m dumb like that.

It has come to this

ken-ichi — Thu, 11 May 2006 06:48:43 +0000

Once again, Man has taken one of God’s many gifts and made it way, way cooler. Behold, The Oozinator. Don’t forget the wonderful but sadly removed Amazon reviews.

Compare and contrast

ken-ichi — Mon, 01 May 2006 20:02:15 +0000

It’s interesting that the US and the EU are both struggling with immigration right now. I was trying to talk to someone about this a week or two ago, attempting to contrast the American melting pot with the European model of hands-off tolerance, but quickly realized I actually knew next to nothing about immigration in either place. Has anyone read any good articles comparing the two situations, historical background, philosophical underpinnings, etc.? Does it matter than European immigrants are mostly Muslim? Why did the unrest in Europe lead to violence while in the US things have remained relatively peaceful?