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24
Aug
2011
18
Aug
2011
Interview CSS
If you were looking for some wise words about Brazilian electro then I’m terribly sorry 
I’m typing up some interviews at the moment, and while I was doing my dip thesis (a long time ago) I read an a list apart article about lists and styling lists. At the same time I was using a javascript library to do the verification on my forms written by Andrew Tetlaw. By a stroke of such enormous coincidence that I was really very surprised by it, Andrew is now the web guy for BVN. Read the rest of this entry »
18
Aug
2011
What else isn’t a con?
A few weeks ago I got sick of being constantly sore after exercise and I bought some protein powder from some nice french chaps in Kings Cross. I’d always thought of it as a massive con, but miraculously I felt fine the next day after an epic gym session, so I kept going, and I’ve felt great after everything I’ve done since.
Whilst this sounds like a ringing endorsement of the wonders of nutritional supplements, really it is a combined shriek of frustration and an a big ah-ha moment. It all leaves me thinking “well if this isn’t a con, then what else isn’t a con too?” I’ve had a few suggestions, with “Jesus” being the most worrying 
(If that’s all real then I’m stuffed!)
We talked about this recently at the Sydney Less Wrong meetup, and one guy admitted to discovering that he’d been tying his shoelaces wrong all his life. We didn’t manage to work out a way to find out how to tell if your brain is lying to you about non-cons and things that you are telling yourself that you are doing right, but are really doing wrong. I’m starting to really distrust my brain.
What else isn’t a con? Any suggestions? I don’t want to miss out any more on the good stuff.
8
Jun
2011
compDesGrp Brisbane
I’m presenting tomorrow at the Brisbane compDesGrp session. This’ll be the first time I’ve been up to Brisbane in about 2 years, and the first time I’ve ever been to one of their cdg sessions. If you happen to be in Brisbane then come along!
30
May
2011
Blackberry Motorist
Paul sent me this today, and I thought that it would be nice to share it:
The blackberry vines grew all around and climbed like green dragon tails the sides of some old abandoned warehouses in an industrial area that had seen its day. The vines were so huge that people laid planks across them like bridges to get at the good berries in the center of them.
There were many bridges reaching into the vines. Some of them were five or six planks long and it took careful balancing to get back in there because if you fell off, there were nothing but blackberry vines for fifteen feet or so beneath you, and you could really hurt yourself on their thorns.
This was not a place you went casually to gather a few blackberries for a pie or to eat with some milk and sugar on them. You went there because you were getting blackberries for the winter’s jam or to sell them because you needed more money than the price of a movie.
There were so many blackberries back in there that it was hard to believe. They were huge like black diamonds but it took a lot of medieval blackberry engineering, chopping entrances and laying bridges, to be successful like the siege of a castle.
“The castle has fallen!”
Sometimes when I got bored with picking blackberries I used to look into the deep shadowy dungeon-like places way down in the vines. You could see things that you couldn’t make out down there and shapes that seemed to change like phantoms.
Once I was so curious that I crouched down on the fifth plank of a bridge that I had put together way out there in the vines and stared hard into the depths where thorns were like the spikes on a wicked mace until my eyes got used to the darkness and I saw a Model A sedan directly underneath me.
I crouched on that plank for a long time staring down at the car until I noticed that my legs were cramped. It took me about two hours to tunnel my way with ripped clothes and many bleeding scratches into the front seat of that car with my hands on the steering wheel, a foot on the gas pedal, a foot on the brake, surrounded by the smell of castle-like upholstery and staring from twilight darkness through the windshield up into green sunny shadows.
Some other blackberry pickers came along and started picking blackberries on the planks above me. They were very excited. I think it was the first time they had ever been there and seen blackberries like that. I sat there in the car underneath them and listened to them talk.“Hey, look at this blackberry!”
Revenge of the Lawn: Stories 1962-1970
Brautigan wrote a book of poetry called “All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace”. Wikipedia says “The title poem envisions a world where cybernetics has advanced to a stage where it allows a return to the balance of nature and an elimination of the need for human labor.“, so I’d imagine that Sam would love it! (He actually recommended that I watch the Adam Curtis documentary of the same name last week, and if anyone has a copy then I’d love to add it to my stable of Curtis docos!)