otoh

I’m not a fan of reality TV. Generally, I find that it is neither real nor entertaining. I’ll watch the occasional episode of American Chopper. And I’ve seen one and a half episodes of It Takes a Thief (although I’d really like to see the old Robert Wagner series again instead). But I am a fan of Lisa Loeb. I have a line from one of her songs in my random quotes on this site. I buy her CDs. But I don’t plan to watch her show.

In Number 1 Single, Ms. Loeb enters the dating world following two six-year relationships. How does a good-looking, talented, successful, mid-30ish, woman look for love after more than a decade off the market? Apparently, in front of a camera. Next!

Is she just cashing in on her celebrity? Maybe I’m being hypocritical. Several of the bloggers I read write openly and honestly about their relationships. I’ve enjoyed fictional TV series and movies that center on the search for true love. And I’m certainly not one to give dating advice. I’ve hit the extremes of making really bad choices and alienating good choices often enough that I’ve taken myself out of the game. I understand completely how difficult it is to navigate the landscape of singlehood. I’m just not sure I understand why it’s now a spectator sport.

On another note, I know that some writers carry on little conversations in their comments. I’m not in the habit of replying to comments, and lately I’ve been pretty bad at even sending email to those of you that comment here. Sorry about that. But I want you to know that I do read and appreciate the comments I get. The recent ones from Jenn and from Lewis about the loss of Challenger were especially poignant. Thanks.

I’ve been thinking about what that day was like for me. As I wrote, I was teaching in Central Florida, but I wasn’t watching when it launched. In fact, I had forgotten that it was scheduled that day. An assistant principal made an announcement that “something had happened” (or some vague, non-committal phrase like that).

I went home and watched the news coverage. As I remember it, they showed the video over and over, referring to a “catastrophic failure” or some silly euphemism like that and stating emphatically that they did not yet know the fate of the astronauts. Like there was a chance any of them survived. Mass denial, understandable under the circumstances, but disturbing.

Technorati tags: Unsigned Artist~blog~personal~otoh

Happy New Year! Today we celebrated the beginning of the lunar year in China, also known as the Spring Festival. This is year 4703 on the Chinese Calendar and it is a Year of the Fire Dog. You can read about what this year might have in store for you at sites like this one.

Yesterday was the 20th anniversary of the loss of the Space Shuttle Challenger. The flight had a teacher on board and I was teaching in Central Forida so it is one of those moments that I will always remember. The kids I teach in high school now were all born after that…. A few years ago, the subject came up at work. We compared where we were in our lives in 1986. I was teaching high school. One coworker was a junior in high school. The other coworker was in second grade. [sigh]

We just ended the year of the Monkey, a mischievous animal. Friday morning on my way to work, I thought I heard the radio say, “How do you know an outie is an outie?” Well, if you have to ask…. Oh wait, it’s an Audi commercial. Never mind.

Always leave ‘em laughing!

Technorati tags: blog~personal~otoh~sydca~Year of the Fire Dog

I wrote about scars back here. And yesterday I posted a photo of one of them. So now I’m dragging yet another post out of the experience….

It was the last Sunday in January of my senior year in high school. We had an extraordinary amount of snow that winter. (The schools had closed for two weeks due to the heavy accumulation. We had also closed for two weeks due to a teacher’s strike. But those are other stories….) I went with one of my friends, Jim, to go sledding in one of the local parks.

I use the term sledding rather loosely because most of the afternoon we slid down on pieces of cardboard not on sleds. On cardboard you can go really fast. Steering — not so much. So, on one particular trip down the hill I intended to pass beside a jump someone had built about halfway down. I learned that intentions are a poor substitute for the ability to steer.

The contours of the hill caused me to veer far to the left of my intended path and directly over the jump. Catching a little unexpected air time caught me off balance. Like an idiot (just like an idiot, trust me) I put out my arm trying to regain my balance and my right hand was the first thing to hit the ground. I knew something wasn’t right. I somehow had the presence of mind to grab my sleeve and hold my right arm across the front of me while I slid the rest of the way down on my back. My arm was broken. Specifically, I broke the humerus, the long bone between the shoulder and elbow. (The “funny bone” jokes wore thin really fast.) Jim, who was at the top of the hill, said he heard it pop.

Jim drove me home and my father took me to the emergency room. After standing around for over an hour (still holding my arm as still as possible, I couldn’t sit down) they managed to slide off my heavy winter coat and then cut the shirts I was wearing. The cast went from my shoulder to my wrist. Turns out, I had damaged the radial nerve too so a splint was added to support my hand. I had to sleep sitting up while the cast was on, something I’ve never been very comfortable doing.

The cast stayed on for six and a half weeks. I remember feeling nauseated when it was removed — apparently a pretty normal reaction. I was also a little shocked at how atrophied the muscles had become. I still needed a splint; about half the muscles in my right arm were paralyzed. A few weeks later, I had surgery to remove some scar tissue from around the nerve. Months of physical therapy and wondering whether I would ever regain use of that arm followed. Much of the PT was stretching, but I also had a little battery-powered device that would shock the paralyzed muscles to make them twitch.

Meanwhile, I dropped a couple classes, keeping in my schedule what I needed to graduate. And I learned to be a southpaw. I relearned how to dress myself. My mother modified a few shirts with Velcro closures on the right sleeve because there was no way to get that cast through. I learned to give myself a sponge bath and wash my hair in the sink. (Plaster cast, couldn’t get it wet, you know.) I got to where I could print pretty legibly — a skill that evaporated almost immediately after I got the use of my right hand back. But I never felt really comfortable with that non-dominant hand. [Okay, some of you should skip to the next paragraph right now. Really. Don't read the next sentence -- you've been warned. Try wiping your ass with your non-dominant hand. It just feels wrong.]

I remember the first time I saw the tiniest twitch of movement where there had been none. The doctors and therapists had told me to keep imagining movement, willing the control to return. It seemed utterly futile, but I kept at it. And one day I stared at my hand thinking, “MOVE!” and it did. Just a little. And it took an extraordinary amount of energy and concentration for each little twitch. I eventually regained almost full use — enough that most people don’t notice that it’s not really 100%. That arm is still more sensitive to cold too. The experience was one of those defining moments that stay with me forever. And I have this really cool scar….

Technorati tags: blog~personal~otoh~It’s Not That Funny, But it was Humerus

When I was a senior in high school I broke my arm and damaged the radial nerve. After six and a half weeks in a cast, about six months in a splint, one operation, and lots of physical therapy, I eventually regained most of the feeling and mobility. And I have this scar that runs from near my shoulder to the inside of my elbow — all the way from here to there. Click on the image for a larger version.

I wrote about scars back here.

Technorati tags: blog~personal~otoh~photo~hnt~otohPhoto: Scarry, Scarry Night

I didn’t intend my question on Monday to be a difficult one. The search term I put in for the Montage-a-google example was simply “otoh”. By the way, I found that if you use exactly the same search term more than once, you get slightly different montages.

I was asked how I saved the montage to use in the post. I use a wonderful little free (for personal, noncommercial or educational use) program called IrfanView (Irfan is the first name of the developer.) It started out as a graphics viewer program, but it does so much more. Like converting images between formats, resizing and cropping images, interfacing with your scanner and printer, creating slideshows, etc. Oh yeah, and it can capture either the entire screen or just the active window. I use it a lot when I write instructions for computer-based projects. Maybe I’ll do a more thorough description for one of my GeekSpeak type posts.

I mentioned yesterday the “news” report about the Most Depressing Day. It was a quick post and I failed to include a link to any of the sources or much of an explanation of how that status was determined. (But, really, if it’s that important to you I figured you would do a search and turn up the same sources I did.) But I do think it’s kind of interesting which factors were included: weather, debt, time between holidays, and failed resolutions, for example and a few others.

While the days are getting longer (in the northern hemisphere) since the winter solstice in December, seasonal weather patterns often bring more dark, cloudy days with ice and snow in January. Seasonal Affective Disorder increases with less exposure to sunlight. The bills you ran up for the holidays are due. And if your new year’s resolutions lasted beyond a week or so, chances are pretty good you have failed to keep them this long.

I was feeling down and depressed when I heard a voice from the cosmos. “Cheer up,” it said, “things could get worse.” So I cheered up. And, sure enough, things got worse….

Oh, I think my cynicism is showing….

Technorati tags: blog~personal~otoh~sydca~Into the Light

How do you get down off an elephant?

I heard on the radio this morning that today is officially the most depressing day of the year. A quick search on Google News found some claims that it was really yesterday and that January 24th was most depressing last year due to the Monday factor. A little knowledge is truly a dangerous thing.

I woke up feeling a little down. There’s a hole in my pillow.
I dreamt all night of gold and woke up feeling gilty.
Oh, and you don’t get down off an elephant. You get down off a goose.

Silly.

Technorati tags: blog~personal~otoh~Don’t Bring me Down

I don’t remember where I ran across these, but since there is nothing happening in my life that I want to write about tonight I went digging through my notes of “stuff I might write about someday”.

The first is a tool of sorts, called Montage-a-google. Type in a term and it finds images from a Google image search. Then it takes 20 of those images and creates a montage. You could use the result as a desktop image or make a poster out of it. Can you guess what term I used to create this:

That little guessing game leads us into the second part because it is just that — a game, Guess-the-google, that shows you a group of images and you guess the term that was used to locate them. Scores are based on how quickly you can guess the correct terms for 10 groups of 20 images. I found that you can improve your score dramatically if you play a few times in a row because some of the screens will repeat.

While both of these use Google, they are not part of the ever-growing family of Google-created or Google-absorbed products. They were created by New Zealander digital designer Grant Robinson. He has a couple other interesting things on his site. Have fun!

Technorati tags: blog~personal~otoh~Google Games

I intended to include a link in my post about Pandora to a podcast of an interview with Tim Westergen, one of the founders of the Music Genome Project and Pandora.

There is also a podcast of an interview with Andre Perrie, founder of Protopage that I wrote about a couple weeks ago.

If you’re not a podperson, you can stream the audio in your browser. And if those direct links don’t work, go to the This Week in Tech site and look for Inside the Net episode 6 and episode 4 respectively.

I read a couple days ago that William Shatner has sold a kidney stone that he passed last year for $25,000 to GoldenPalace.com (the same outfit that bought the cheese sandwhich with the image of the Virgin Mary and other oddities). He is donating the money to Habitat for Humanity. I wrote a few weeks ago (here, here, and here) about my kidney stone. I never took mine to be analyzed and I think I still have it. I can’t imagine that anyone would pay money to see it though. But, I don’t know who’s paying to see William Shatner these days either….

And if this story is true, some poor guy found out his girlfriend was cheating on him when his pet parrot kept squawking her lover’s name. He no longer has her… or the bird. Wait, wasn’t there an old joke about that?

Technorati tags: blog~personal~otoh~sydca~More Links than a Sausage Mill

A couple days after Christmas I was taking some photos of my threee-year-old nephew TJ. He would hear the camera beep when the autofocus locked and think I was done, so many of the shots turned out like this:

Actually, that’s a pretty accurate portrayal. If you’ve spent any time around young children, you know what I mean. But on that day he was dressed like Robin. He changed out of his Spiderman pajamas and into this. Why did he want to be Robin that day? I think it’s because he could….

Technorati tags: blog~personal~otoh~photo~hnt~otohPhoto: I Need a Hero

Steve Martin said, “Talking about music is like dancing about architecture.” Let’s talk about music anyway. Imagine sitting around with friends and you play a song. “Oh,” one of them says, “if you like that you’ll probably like this too.” “Yeah,” you reply, “and that reminds me of this other one that I just love!” “Then you have to hear this….” And so it goes.

Now imagine one of your friends is like the biggest music geek in the world and has analyzed hundreds of thousands of songs, classified and categorized them — not by genre or popularity or how pretty the lead singer is but by more objective characteristics like melody, harmony, rhythm, orchestration, etc. In fact, your friend is SUCH a music geek that they created a set of a few hundred “genes” for those characteristics — a music genome. So when you name a song, they can give you a hundred or so other songs that are similar.

Welcome to Pandora. There really is a music genome, and it is the basis for this online “Music Discovery Service”. Create a new station by entering the name of a song or artist. If you enter a song, they will play songs with similar characteristics. Your song will be in the mix somewhere, but the license does not allow them to play a specific song on demand. If you enter an artist, they will play a song representative of that artist and then songs by other artists that are similar. Add more songs/artists to expand the range of that station.

As each song plays, you can give it a thumbs up/down vote, add it to a list of favorites, or purchase it from Amazon or from iTunes. Giving a thumbs up will increase the frequency of that song and songs similar to it. Giving a thumbs down will decrease or remove a song from the mix. Your favorites has a unique address so you can share your list with friends, or look up info and purchase tunes later. You can also share stations.

I’ve been playing with Pandora for a few weeks now and I like it. Approaching it like a conversation, as they describe themselves, is fairly satisfying and has lead me to several artists that I want to learn more about. (I’ll give some specific examples in another post.) I like that they ignore the genres applied by recording company bean counters to help them count beans and treat each song as a unique expression. And right now, the free version has exactly the same capabilities as the paid version. If you’re looking for a place to create a playlist of specific songs and listen only to those songs or a place to download free MP3s, this is most definitely NOT the place for you.

Anyway, here are links to two of the stations I’ve been playing with. The first one I created by adding the names of female singers. I tend to prefer female vocalists. But because adding artists broadens the range of music I still get occasional male vocals in the mix. By giving them a thumbs down and most of the females thumbs up, it’s getting there. I also gave thumbs down to a couple females, Ashlee Simpson for example. Okay, she is a female with a recording contract, but her 15 minutes were up LONG ago. If that confuses Pandora, I can live with it. The second one I created by adding only song titles and it does keep the mix tighter. Both need more work. But I can have up to 100 stations at a time and there are still just 24 hours in a day….

Technorati tags: blog~pandora~personal~otoh~geekspeak~Opening Pandora’s Music Box