The online computery journal thingy of a turtle

08:53 pm - Anthrocon here I (will be) com(e/ing)!

I'm all packed up and ready to fly to Pittsburgh tomorrow!

01:47 pm - It's hard being a math geek sometimes

The other day I was in the supermarket looking at granola bars as a possible source of calcium, when I spotted a cereal. I forget what they were called, but I know the name began with "Hex". Hex-bits, Hexacrisp, something like that. It was similar to Crispix, and was made in little hexagonal pieces.

What bugs me about it is that the photo on the box showed a bowl full of the cereal... an OCTAGONAL bowl. This is just WRONG somehow!

I think what troubles me is that it's hard enough getting people to tell the difference between hexagons and octagons. I keep seeing cartoon drawings of hexagonal stop signs and octagonal hex nuts. One time I created a geometrical dissection of a regular hexagon into a regular octagon and cut out cardboard pieces to demonstrate. I showed it to someone, and he wasn't impressed, because he didn't realize that the shape had changed!

It's hard being a math geek sometimes.

01:14 pm - Stuff in the paper this morning

Good cartoon from David Horsey (which I can't easily find on his website; it may be a rerun):

Two guys sitting at a cafe counter. One says, "We gotta get government off our backs!" The other says, "Amen, brother! I'm fed up with universities and public schools and national parks and pure drinking water and health services and cops and firemen and highways and food safety standards and the Army, Navy and Air Force and all the rest! Give me my hard-earned tax dollars to spend as I see fit!"

The waitress is looking on, and she says to a woman dining at the counter, "You gotta give him points for actually knowing what government does."


Then there's something odd in Ellen Goodman's column. She's talking about the protests in Iran being the first major historical event to be covered using Twitter. And she quotes a tweet from a user named Mousavil388*: "One Person(equal sign)One Broadcaster."

That's odd. Can't you just type an equal sign, Ellen Goodman? I wonder if she types her columns on an old typewriter. We have an old Smith-Corona with no equal sign key. If I wanted to type =, I'd fake it by typing -(backspace)_. (Actually, it occurs to me now I could have made a better-looking equal sign by typing a hyphen, backspacing, pressing the shift key in slightly and typing another hyphen.)


*Or possibly Mousavi1388, with a one instead of an L. It's hard to tell.

11:43 pm - Sooo

Sooo... who else is going to Anthrocon?

11:21 pm - Pants-al

Sooo, on Wednesday I fly up to Pittsburgh for Anthrocon.

I'm looking forward to it, except for one problem: I'm experiencing some kind of chronic discomfort in the... pants-al region. I must see a doctor on Monday and hope he/she can help, because this is really getting me down and I don't want it ruining the con for me. It doesn't hurt a lot or anything, but I constantly feel like I have to pee, EVEN WHEN I DON'T ACTUALLY HAVE TO.

I wish it weren't the weekend. I wish I didn't have to wait till Monday and hope I can get an appointment for either Monday or Tuesday, the only two days I'll be able to see a doctor before I leave. Is it a kidneystone? Is it an infection? I don't know and I wish I knew and I wish I could DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT BY MYSELF RIGHT NOW.

Current Mood: uncomfortable

08:07 pm - Prickly teleprompter

Wow. Republicans are crazy. Here's today's Prickly City, making fun of President Obama's use of a teleprompter (which, btw, everyone else has stopped doing by now anyway, lol comic strip lead time).

Notice the comments. The very first one sets the tone:

Hmmm isn’t it intersting, how when “Others” were in office every little gaff was fair game.
But now that our Glorious leader has been annoited and coronated, we must now all “respect the dignity of the office”

Shows how out-of-ammunition Obama’s opponents are when all they can dis him for is using teleprompters all the time - just like little Bushie always did, and that great communicator always did (when he wasn’t pretending he couldn’t hear the reporters’ questions), not to mention both Clinton & Bush Sr. always did.

05:13 pm - Portable DVD player works!

Two years or so ago, I got a portable DVD player for free. See, my dad, who was a professor of nuclear physics at Rice University, had been on the staff there for 50 years, so they sent him a hunk of polished crystal glass engraved with "You've been with us for 50 years! Awesome!" or words to that effect. They also sent him a free gift: a catalog. Well, the catalog itself wasn't the gift; he was supposed to pick an item out of it and *that* would be the free gift. It was all fancy "executive" style merchandise: fancy pens, fancy cufflinks, fancy briefcases, fancy golf clubs, fancy electronic gizmos, and fancy so on.

Thing is, my dad wasn't a fancy guy; he was the kind of guy who spends the day bashing protons against each other, teaching the secrets of the universe to underappreciative med students as a course requirement, and then coming home to sog on the couch, have a Pepsi, do the daily crossword and watch "Two and a Half Mythbuster Baseballs". He didn't even *play* golf.

So he wasn't really interested in any of the fancy things in the fancy catalog. But I spotted a portable Audiovox D1718 DVD player, with built-in rechargeable battery, and I thought it would be handy to take on trips so I could watch movies in airplanes, hotels and bathrooms. So I asked him, if he selected the DVD player, could I use it? He said OK, and did that.

( But then I got a laptop. But it turns out that trying to use a laptop in coach SUCKS! So I need the DVD player after all. Does it still work? I tested it, and... ) it still works! Yaay! Anthrocon here I come, and I'll be bringing Mirrormask or Time Bandits or something. I gotta wonder, though... what's the deal with this business about charging up the battery every two months?

09:17 pm - Obama 1, Fly 0

I know an Obama who swatted a fly.
He saw the fly, and made the fly die.
I like that guy!

05:01 pm - Molar: The Re-re-re-crowning

I've got a gold crown on a lower molar on the left side of my mouth that keeps coming off. It's been popped off by various chewy things: a Cheetos Twisted Puff, some jellybeans, and last week, a particularly chewy piece of flatbread. The first two times, the dentist cleaned it off and glued it back on.

( Cut for possible squicky mouth surgery TMI )

But finally he was all done and my crown was back in. The rest of the day, my mouth was sore on the left, and chewing, even just on the right side, hurt on the left. I had soup for lunch. But yesterday I recovered enough to have a burger and fries. Yum!

And I noticed something encouraging: the previous time the dentist had put the crown back in, it rode a little high, and my bite felt a bit unnatural, like one of my teeth had suddenly become too big. This time around, I don't have that; my jaws fit together perfectly! So hopefully it'll stay in a lot longer this time.

(It will also help if I can remember to brush every day. I slacked off recently, and that probably contributed to the problem. Thing is, brushing isn't fun; no matter what they do to toothpaste, it still tastes like fucking TOOTHPASTE. Bleh.)

12:03 am - Diary update!

I know I haven't yet finished the MFF 2008 diary, but here's the start of...



New diary:
KT's Morphicon 2009 Diary!

Five pages so far:
Page 1: Drove from Houston to Hammond. Needed washer fluid and spoons.
Page 2-1: Drove up through Mississippi. Stolen monument! Obamedy.
Page 2-2: Dinner in Southaven. Holiday Inn Express in Memphis. Wi-fi no workie?
Page 3: Drove to Louisville. Found Mountain Dew Throwback!
Page 4: To the Bat Factory! But first to the mall. What mall? Pizza. Bat. Wi-fi workie!

03:07 am - Interpreting "Gates of Eden" for fun

Ever heard Bob Dylan's song "Gates of Eden"? It's one of his songs with lyrics that seem to make no sense. Those are always fun to try to interpret. Here are the lyrics (with the verses numbered for convenience):


( Of war and peace the truth just twists... )


This song has many possible interpretations. It could be about the actual Biblical garden of Eden, or it could be about dreams, or love, or whatever. I just thought of a new possible hypothetical interpretation...

( My interpretation )

02:55 am - Carameeellldaaannnsssseeeennnnn

You know that Caramelldansen track that shows up on YouTube sometimes, occasionally accompanied by anime characters dancing and wiggling their hands on their heads like bunny ears? Well, you might know that the original, in addition to being Swedish despite sounding like J-pop, is actually slower. The anime-bunny-ears version (known as the Speedycake remix) was made by speeding it up.

Just for fun I decided to take it in the other direction and slow down the original track. Here's what it sounds like now!

12:54 am - Ack, I'm falling apart

Ohh, boy. My crown has come out again. Oh, and tomorrow I have an appointment with the nephrologist, so any dental work will have to wait till Friday.

At least it doesn't hurt... though it does a bit if I drink something cold.

10:44 pm - Just what Houston needs, another dome...

On Monday, there was a show on the Discovery Channel called "Mega Engineering", and it was about how a giant geodesic dome might someday be built over Houston, protecting it from hurricanes and other nasty weather.

Well... actually it was about building a 1-mile-diameter dome over *downtown* Houston, leaving the other 600 square miles of the city exposed to the elements. And it sounds to me like a dumb idea. I still remember when Hurricane Rita was about to hit Houston, and all the streets out of town were clogged with people trying to drive to other cities. They were clogged for hours, even a whole day, if I recall.

Well, imagine a dome built over downtown Houston. Now imagine another hurricane coming. Now imagine the streets heading downtown getting clogged up with cars, as everybody tries to rush downtown, overcrowding the place, overloading the services, and then millions of other people getting stuck outside the huge dome. Explain to me how this is *better*?

03:24 pm - Diary update!

Here's the latest update of
Midwest Furfest 2008!

Three new pages have been added:
Page 5-1: Monty Python Fluxx. Sponsor brunch. Neuracnu. Fursuit Parade. Making masks in the Den.
Page 5-3: Late getting pizza in my room with friends.
Page 6-1: Moved into the La Quinta. Lost key? Holiday puppet show. Buca di Beppo.

02:05 am - New icon, and Kasou Taishou

I just made a new icon! And yes, it is solvable.

07:16 pm - Up again, and truck!

Today I took Mom to see "Up". She loved it! Also, I spotted the Pizza Planet truck! ( Possible spoilers about that and other stuff about the movie. )

08:53 pm - Up

"Up" is awesome.
"Partly Cloudy", the short before it, is ( funny. )

Trailers I saw:
"Cloudy with a chance of meatballs" again.
"Imagine That" yet again.
"G-Force", about an elite Special Ops team of trained guinea pigs.
Teaser for "Toy Story 3".

01:04 pm - LiveJournal theme help needed!

Aaaaargh!!!

I need help from anyone who's had more practice than me playing around with LiveJournal S2 styles and themes.

Is it possible to change my settings so that I'm viewing my friends page in one theme (say, Classic Desktop Generator) and comment pages (both my own and other people's) in another theme (say, Standard Tabular Indent)? The FAQ pages are a jumbled series of jumbled piles of tl;dr and no help at all.


I want Generator for my friends page because I like how if someone posts a really wide image, it doesn't mess up my whole friends-page layout because each entry is in its own box, and the boxes resize independently. Unfortunately, I don't like Generator for comment pages because these boxes are only about half as wide as the screen, and when I'm reading long comment threads, that's a lot of wasted space.


Alternately, could anyone recommend a theme/layout that does the "boxes resizing independently" thing without the "wasted space" thing?

Current Mood: frustrated

08:25 pm - What I did this weekend

I commissioned some colored fabric from a man in Reno, just to watch him dye.