Category: Glot

Dreams, agonies, joyful reminiscence, reflections, delightful fantasies horrifying truths. All just words.

Migrated from a blog, or “glot”, if you will, that I wrote from 2004-2016.

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Glot

Maybe I’ll Another Glot?

I’ve been getting that itch again. The itch to write bullshit that I likely will never read nor remember in this abandoned, ridiculous edifice to my past self. Something about remembering my life during the course of actually living it — something about caring what I think — something about caring what other people think.

An altogether forgettable day, today. Woke up from dreams remembered but unwritten (running past a train in the snow). None of them clearly evoked waking life. Spent time working blissfully in a free reaction-diffusion program, Ready. Thought mostly about how I wanted to redesign my blog — a blog I hardly write in, and which I have no qualms about calling a damn blog now (see how much I’ve matured?). Made a proof-of-concept using CSS masking.

For the past few weeks I’ve been feeling like I want to write in here again. It’s strange, though… I don’t want to write for anyone but myself. I like the idea of keeping dreams and diary entries. I want to have the LiveJournal that I never had when I was 18, when having a LiveJournal was a thing. As is my usual pattern, instead of actually writing anything, I manage to obsess over the design of the bloody site until I’m practically sick of the idea. All I really want is a space I myself find beautiful. I want a place to leave the thoughts I don’t want anymore. I want to be able to look back at something I like. My current spate of design ideas are perhaps best conveyed by this dinosaur’s camouflage:

This blog feels old. Lots of people’s blogs do… and I should know since I just went for a snoop around. The era when the personal blog was relevant is gone. My tech-savvy friends’ blogs are left as a testament to the brief period of history where we myopically perceived it important to maintain our own websites. Silly, in retrospect. It was only a matter of time before mass-solutions like Facebook and LinkedIn evolved to decisively address the problem of digital identity. Because, you see, writing in them is probably more important than designing them.

To you reading this don’t take it too seriously. This is me cursing out my diary, for goodnessakes. It’s something I do from time to time. I just wanted to edify something, to perma-cast the feels I grok at this moment’s happening. That is to say, this is just to say. Just word-talks.

EDIT: if you’re reading this on ori.nz, you can probably figure out what happened instead!

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Glot

A Strange Thing Happened Once…

…and it happened to me. Ask me about it and I won’t know exactly how to explain. I’ll tell you what I think I know. Knowledge is tricky, it seems to me. If we really get down to nitty-gritty, if we really examine the evidence carefully, it can be said — in a literal, non-symbolic sense — that we actually know nothing. We only think we know. I’ll tell you what I think I know. Hopefully you want to think you know it, too.

Hey, I have a blog. Wow. That’s nice to rediscover.

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Glot

Ghosts of the Hillside

Ghosts of the Hillside

On July 8, 2012, Chicken and I were returning to Lodoga to retrieve his RV, the Hotel Miami, left there after Camp Tipsy. We saw some strange clouds on the horizon. After briefly speculating on whether they could maybe (possibly) be smoke, we came across an honest-to-goodness wildfire (about 10 feet across) burning on this very hillside.

The Sites Complex fire of 2012 involved 88 fire engines, 24 bulldozers, 6 helicopters, and 1339 personnel. It burned 4185 acres. It’s the only good reason I’ve ever driven the perilous Leesville Road.

I was pretty amazed to locate the exact hillside this year. A lot has changed. But when I compare the original Instagram from that day, I’m sure. The geo-location is as precise as possible.

We fought it with a squeegee and my front door mat. Chicken got smoke inhalation. We did a bad job stopping it, but the California Fire Marshalls who later visited me to investigate told me that — of course — we really couldn’t have. When it comes to wildfires, 10 feet is already too big. No heroes came back that day. Just pictures.

Categories
Optiglot

Abandoned Old Barn

A little like this blog. Well-loved but mostly forgotten.

Categories
Optiglot

Resolved: More Pictures, Less Whining

I wrote kind of a long post. It was about how great Flickr used to be, and lots other internet nostalgia — Consumating, Upcoming, stuff that just isn’t like it used to be. It made me sound like an old fogey. Feel like an old fogey. And really, all I wanted to say was that Upload all to-be-uploaded Flickr photos was on my 2012 New Year’s resolutions. I also included a half-apology about posting a New Year’s resolution in February. All in all, fairly self-passive-aggressive.

So instead I wrote this. It’s about how I think it will be good to just have all my photo backlog uploaded safe, public, and forever. How I can use my DSLR again without such a burden of responsibility. It’s about getting my life a little more sorted. And not being such a nostalgia freak, even when the territory get pretty darn nostalgic. Short and sweet.

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Glot

Wishlist 2011

Alright, yes, I know I’m a little late. I know that I’m so late that there’s probably no chance of getting something on this list because there’s not enough time to have it shipped from Siberia. But oh well. I’ll list them anyway, and if I get one thing listed I’ll be surprised and pleased. Just like a real Christmas!

General

I like small musical instruments, unusual hats (size x-large or large), interesting vinyl records from the 50s and 60s, any sort of animal artwork, toy dinosaurs (and other prehistoric creatures), and cool sunglasses.

Specific

Noen av munnharpene mine - some of my jew's harpsKhomus (Jew’s Harp)

Why do I want one of these? They go ‘boing boing boyoyoy-wee-ooo-yoing’. I love tiny fun instruments in general. Awhile ago I got a Schylling brand Jew’s Harp and it didn’t work. At all. Sadface.

One made near the Altai mountains would be awesome. In the words of an ethnologist “the Altai region has perfected this ideophone as far as is humanly possible”. One from anywhere in Siberia would be ok, too. But location isn’t that important; just thought I’d mention.

A real cordless drill

Look at this one. It has a real battery, different speeds, you don’t need a chuck to tighten it, and there’s a neat little flashlight that comes on when you use it. This isn’t pictured, but it also clicks into place when it’s tightened enough.

Just like Pete Goldie’s.

Feather comforter, brown (or other non-white color), size: Queen

We’ve needed a new one for awhile. At this point, our ratty old comforter has more material outside than it does inside. We’ve determined that having bed linens in white is the fastest way to get them stained, which is why non-white.

Just a Microphone Stand

We do a radio show. Sometimes we record from home, but it’s really difficult because we don’t have one of these. Simpler would be better. Not too heavy. Just, you know, a mic stand.

An Orange Public M8 from Public Bicycles

Yeah, let’s be serious, I don’t really expect anyone to get me a $1000 bicycle. But my old bike is a P.O.S. and borrowing my mom’s Huffy is getting old.

I like the Mixte frame of this, and I appreciate the number of gears. I really appreciate that it’s advertised as “suitable for all cities, even for the hills of San Francisco.” And, of course… I love the color.

Not to say that if there were a similar one on sale in a different color that I’d be at all disappointed.

A Pair of Socks with Sharks on them that are Eating my Feet

Thanks Lauren!

Categories
Glot-glot

Glot Theme #4 “Glot-o-matic” Unshelved

Rubik's Window

Well, hm. This is sort of embarrassing. Did any of you read that post I made back in November, about my upcoming website redesign? I was so excited. So eager. So naïve.

So… it’s been awhile since then. Most elements of my design were actually implemented; others were forgotten as life went on (as it tends to). So I’ve decided that good enough is good enough — as usual. I seem to be growing more practical and less apologetic in my old age. At least as far as apologizing for personal web designs done in my free time as a  hobby, skill-building exercise, and meditation on imperfectness.

Anyways. This is the New Stuff:

  • GLOT letters at the top are dynamic div areas (pure pixels!), style-able with CSS
  • author portrait with color-changing vertical stripes behind it
  • post titles used the 04_19 font; now they use Grixel Extended
  • tags attached to a post now have the same color and have a mini-tag next to them on hover
  • “about me” spiel is revealed on portrait hover
  • recent comments appear in the sidebar (in pixelated form)
  • Tumblr quotes, delicious links, Last.fm songs in the sidebar
  • my WeHeartIt images used as filler in the sidebar
  • number of comments shown in a comment bubble
  • posts outside of the default category (Wordglot) are now specially featured on the front page
  • Flickr photos show up below the main column on the front page
  • ditto for Twitter tweets, too
  • Creative Commons license and contact link shown prominently in the footer
  • post pages now have a more interesting mono-color scheme
  • possibility to set a featured image as background for a post
  • the “not found” page is really cool — try it!

And this is the Broken Stuff:

  • spacing is off in lots of places
  • colors can combine in near-unreadable contrast
  • the tags page… is bad
  • vigorous testing was not vigorous
  • I haven’t even checked it in Internet Explorer. Really. That’s how much fuck IE.
  • comments have no pictures and are a gray box
  • no, seriously — there’s not even a place to comment at all yet

Comment below and let me know what you think!

Categories
Glot

Birthday/Christmas Wishlist 2010

2006

  • any shirt that looks like those pictured
  • bow-ties, like real bow ties that you tie on, especially ones with patterns or polka-dots, are cool
  • 2 terabyte hard drive for cheap received!
  • a magical easily-obtainable driver’s license for wifefriend Lynae
  • accordion (note: a very complicated choice that I’d really like to make myself… at some point in the future)
  • this toy caveman is pretty awesome, and is all of $7 (for the thrifty present-giver)Although… you know, as long as I’m mentioning it here, the toy manufacturer (Papo) makes a really great Plesiosaurus and Allosaurus, too. I have their Oviraptor and it’s top-notch. Consider it mentioned.
  • iPhone 4, for better or for worse, cf. “I must have the iPhone 4 […] I need the one with more gee-bees”
  • iPhone-to-FM transmitter, car mount, case that can safely get run over by a car
  • a new comforter — because apparently 5 years should have been considered a good run
  • Better Internet – we’re considering a local Wireless ISP (WISP) named MonkeyBrains.net that requires an up-front investment for an antenna. We’re still deciding on this one, and it’s not glamorous, but an upgrade from 3M/b download to 30M/b for less per month is a heck of a win-win.
  • The Secret Museum Of Mankind, Vol. 5 – you know how often I go for physical CD media, so this better be special. Indeed it is — I have the first 4 in the series, and they’re amazing, but for whatever reason this is missing from the Internet and thus my collection.Check out this 1939 track from South Africa, from the only recording studio in sub-Saharan Africa at the time, and the origin of the melody for “Lion Sleeps Tonight”:
    [audio:Solomon Lindas Original Evening Birds – Mbube (South Africa).mp3]
Categories
Glot-glot

Upcoming GLOT-o-MATIC

Religiously, I tune and tweak. I intuit and poke. A new Glot design is in the works. I drew this a week ago:

There’s nothing wrong with it yet. It’s still in that wonderful stage where nothing is broken, per se, just not gotten-to yet. But why do it in the first place?

Well, it’s exquisite process of brain-development and creative excercise and human development. I set out to learn things sometimes, then I learn them.  This time it was CSS3 and HTML5 and some Javascript. Hopefully, maybe, possibly, that pays off some day.

Very little is started, but one interesting thing I’m adding is more pictures. Below is an image from my WeHeartIt feed, which will automatically be displayed in the sidebar (just like this!) :

Nifty, huh? Back to work.

Categories
Glot

Insert Title

You know how I salute people sometimes? I do it because it’s as an easy, well-understood respect gesture. It’s simple and effective. I’ve been doing it for years, ever since my ill-fated job as a door-to-door salesman in Australia. Well, Australia is different from either Bulgaria or Serbia where people are rather distrustful of the military. So when I was there this September my saluting trick didn’t work so well, but I kept doing it. Out of habit.

But I have other bad habits. One of them is putting a lot of work into an interesting creative project for a month and then forgetting about it. But that’s more of a personality flaw and not the message I’m here to get across.

Similar to my habit of saluting even when I know it’s stupid, I call people sir and ma’am. Why? Because it’s formal and therefore I can subvert it. See, cause I don’t have a real job in business or customer service, or something. So it’s ironic when I say it informally… right? Unfortunately, it’s also stupid.

Which is why when I was working the door at Bad Movie Night on Sunday and used ma’am, I was informed by an annoyed and emphatic miss that it should only be used for married women. Sorry, miss, and semantic distinction acknowledged. So with the next chance I get to fix it I did — by using “sir” instead. This also happened to be rather stupid because the next person was female, which, you know, I knew. Needless to say, this didn’t go over well either. Neither, I think, did my haphazard explanation of the problematic semantics behind “miss” and “ma’am.” Although happy to correct the error, I think next time I need to focus more on the apologizing and less on the confusing grammar. If the lady in question ever finds herself reading this, here it is more eloquently: I’m sorry to have klutzed my way into gender confusion; I can see how I might present myself like a clueless schmuck, and maybe I am, but either way I hope it won’t upset you in future. Sorry for the megillah and also for the Yiddish.

I could just change my habit to avoid gender-based titles entirely, and that’s what I’m considering. Seems perfectly sensible, all things considered. I just need something more fun than “the party of the second part.”