Catalog your books by ISBN and discuss them on librarything.com
Reminds me of Bookcrossing
Donated to Alex King
I donated a few dollars to Alex King for some of his Wordpress plugins that I like using so much.
What I got on Amazon.com Today
Items not yet shipped:
Delivery estimate: April 6, 2006 - April 10, 2006
* 1 of: Breaking the Spell : Religion as a Natural Phenomenon - for my discussion with TJIC
* 1 of: The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster - all proceeds go toward the purchase of a missionary pirate ship
* 1 of: The Morrow Guide to Knots - a present for a friend
* 1 of: Mighty Morphin Power Rangers - The Movie - a present for me
* 1 of: Canon Powershot A610 5MP Digital Camera with 4x Optical Zoom - because pictures are good
* 1 of: Shall We Dance? (Full Screen Edition) - a present for a friend at the office (M.S.)
* 1 of: SanDisk SDSDB-1024-A10 1 GB Secure Digital Card - more with the pictures
I flew
For the first time in forever, I flew. The Zagi flew very roughly by my unpracticed hands, with new flimsy winglets (some tape will fix that), some exposed wiring and flapping skin, new coroplast elevons, and with high and gusty winds. But I flew :-)
I can drive to the park, fly 2 batteries and bop into 7-11 for some sandwiches in under an hour. :-)
Pirate Riding a Tyrannosaurus Rex
Dearest Lazyweb,
I have no graphic arts artistic talent at all. Would someone that -does- have some please contact me about drawing a pirate riding a Tyrannosaurus Rex. It is for a good cause and if it takes more than 5 minutes to draw, we’re doing it wrong.
Golden Gate Milonga
I went to the Golden Gate Milonga with Vixen tonight… a real Argentine Tango milonga with dancing and everything. It was great fun. We’ll both be back to this milonga and others!
Todays Important Links and Commentary
The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie review by Matt of X-Entertainment.com captures a lot of what I love about the movie. Maura and I had a great laugh reading it and remembering how totally true to the original is.
Rovang.org has more information about the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers than you need. But not as much as you want.
RuinedEndings.com will ruin the ending of most any movie you want to see :-)
Black Ranger Rules.
Dear friends can make you happy.
Update
I really like my little studio apartment at 24th and Valencia in San Francisco. I commute to Cupertino 3 days a week and telecommute 2 days to Wavexpress.
I worked for Wavexpress back in 2000 and they hired me back this summer. We/they are still trying to make a video blog viewer that works a lot like television. I’m a little disappointed in the progress we’ve made, but I’ll keep plugging away at it because it pays the rent.
I have been doing my best to enjoy life… going to events like the Urban Iditarod, Kite Fight (although I have still never made it to a successful event, I have been trying now for two months… I am beginning to doubt that Rick really exists), Argentine tango classes, concerts, more concerts… I’m probably going to do Improv lessons at BATS soon.
For exercise, I’ve been running (occasionally). I feel good when I do it. I was thinking of going to Golden Gate State Park right after writing this…
For my commute to Cupertino, I have been carpooling with a coworker named Linden. Well, actually he works for Wave and I’m with Wavexpress (we’re just like Wave, only we don’t stop as much) We’ve been getting along splendidly. For the last month we have been listening to Malcolm Gladwell’s “Blink” on the way to and from work. It’s a fantastic book. Before that, we have been listening to podcasts that I have been downloading from the internet. over the last several weeks I have been watching the first three seasons of Penn and Teller’s “Bullshit”. I feel like they might turn me into an atheist yet. At the very least, they have reminded me of how important personal responsibility is.
I still haven’t put any art on my walls. I don’t know… I like the clean lines or something. I’ve got lots of art from friends and my own collection… I should just put a nail in the wall and see what happens…
A coworker (well, she’s with Wave…) showed me a model airplane field thats 10 minutes from my office last week. I’m getting my planes ready to fly!
I was introduced to a friend of Jeremy and Fiz.. Charlotte. She lives in Boston right now but she’s moving to SF this summer. I’ll give further news as it develops.
And I continue to find it to be near impossible task to keep up with all of my friends blogs. I do apologize. I’m not sure if it’s crazy that it often takes me a week to get back to people via email. The backlog just never ends.
Tarot as a Meditation… and Power Rangers!
I
give little creedance to the thought that Tarot draw upon supernatural powers (maybe a tiny bit of creedance, but certainly very very little). But they are certainly good as a meditation on a subject. It can be something that helps you focus your thoughts on a matter.
And then this comes along… This is the card Charlotte recently drew from the Voyager Tarot when meditating about her uncertain future and the thoughts of moving west.
This is the trust card… You may notice the Golden Gate bridge and the SF skyline… and it’s probably nothing but I mailed her a little plastic frog a few days before she pulled the card.
I’m reminded of the famous scene in the 1995 Mighty Morphin Power Rangers Movie just after the Rangers got their powers. One is embued with the majestic powers of a giant mechanized crane, another gains giant ape powers. And Adam… well… Dulcea looked at the forlorn new Black Ranger Adam. She asked, “Adam, what is wrong?”
Adam responds with a sullen expression of frustration and futility saying, “I’m a frog.”
I’m glad I saw it in the theater. Heck it was way better than Star Wars I.
Orisinal fun Flash games
Very fun. Very cute. Kid friendly. I like em too.
Except for that “shoo the penguins with the ice cube gun to save them” game. It feels way too much like Duck Hunt.
Ben Stein, Anne Graham and Fear Mongering
I recently got one of those “forward this to all your friends” emails. It offended me so much that I wrote a response and sent it to all 100 or so people I found in the Forwarded by… list.
First the letter, and then my response.
(more…)
Firefox Shortcuts
Firefox has a gazillion keyboard shortcuts.
Here are the ones I use (or want to remember to use…)
Quick Search - Right-click on any input box (IE: the search bar on my blog). You’ll see “Add a keyword for this search”. You can make it so that searching my blog for fun is as easy as typing the following into the Firefix address bar “l fun”
My searches are:
g - google.com
l - lee.org/blog
w - wikipedia.org
Alt-D - jump to the address bar
/ - find ( ‘ and ctrl-f are other types of find commands)
Here’s way more keyboard shortcuts
Improv Classes
I’m thinking of doing Improv classes at BATS Improv Theater :-)
There’s a “Foundation I” class running every Sunday from April 23rd to May 28th.
Last week I caught a “Double Feature” long-form improv show at BATS and quite enjoyed it. I’ve always (I remember wanting to very badly in college) wanted to try improv.
:-)
Flying in Cupertino
Rancho San Antonio County Park is 10 minutes from my office in Cupertino and it’s a great electric model aviation field. And since it’s not someone’s official field, I don’t need no stinking AMA membership.
Model Aviation Wowness
I’m starting to think about model aviation again. It’s been a long while. I had promised Ma’at that I’d get her in the air at Burning Man 2006. It still seems like a great challenge. There are two big challenges I can think of. First, finding the right plane to put her on. The Trick 1000 didn’t work very well for a few reasons. The second challenge is safety. I want to fly her over the heads of Burners at night. What I want to do is put her on a platform that can (in a worst case scenario) hit a person and have it not hurt. I’ve been hit by my Zagi a few times and the EPP foam and rear-mounted motor made the strike a non-issue. I think it’s possible to make a crash-safe plane but it’s going to take some effort to get such a plane to be able to carry the 12 oz payload of Ma’at and her batteries.
My apartment is strewn with playa-dusty airplane parts as I begin to get things together. While I was looking online for some answers to my questions, I ran across an inspiring video. Give it a view and then tell me flying isn’t uplifting and beautiful.
(Article with video link)
(Video link), Mark Leseberg at Tucson Shootout 2003.
(local version) (26megabytes)
Andrew Schinasi
On Friday I met Andrew Schinasi and his girlfriend at lunch in Boogaloos. He’s a jazz saxophonist from Montreal. It was cool meeting them and talking about a panoply of political subjects. If we could only stay on one subject, we might change the world.
I bought his VERY recently produced (IE, earlier in the day) “Andrew Schinasi Compilation 2001-2006″ and I’ve got to say that I’m pretty impressed. I’m usually not much of a jazz fan but it’s really good.
It’s all good, I tell you.
Rainbow Grocery Happiness
I
saw mention of Rainbow Grocery on Yelp. I thought, “oh that’s nice, another snazzy grocery store.” Boy was I wrong.
Their cheese shop is quite formidable. I think I counted 4 wild-picked mushroom varieties and at least another 5 varieties present! Their spices and bulk food sections are exceptional. It is crunchy-granola heaven. And, they have a huge variety of exciting specialty foods.
But most important of all, they have a tap stuck out of a 55 gallon drum of Vermont Grade B Maple Syrup! And while Charlotte gave me a tremendous gift by finding and bringing Trader Joes Maple Syrup all the way from Boston, this…. THIS is the stuff! I just compared them head to head and all it takes is a glance to tell the difference. The Coomb’s syrup is darker, thicker and has a richer smell. And the taste… now I’ll say that Trader Joe’s makes a fine syrup. It really is. In fact, it’s probably what more people would prefer. But this is maple syrup that tastes like driving past a sugar house in early spring with the billowing steam that you’d say looks dangerous until you roll your window down and then the smell encompasses you like a jet plane diving into a cloudbank. It’s like living in another, infinitely more delicate world for a million years in a second. It brings to mind the colors of the ground during mud season when the melting snow, recently uncovered grass and previously frozen dirt turn into a slippery, boot-sucking menace with deep scars where vehicles foolishly tried to cross from the driveway to the relative safety of black-top.
Good maple syrup makes me so happy. Thank you Charlotte. Thank you Rainbow Grocery. Thank you Coomb’s Family of Brattleboro Vermont!
Those who run from suffering
Those who run from suffering run right into it.
~ a Buddist saying heard on an Audio Dharma talk by Gil Fronsdal
