SimpleWeblog

Soccer: Loss (5-1?)

For some strange reason, we played the same team again. And we did better, but still not so good. Two of their goals came on penalty kicks, only one of which seemed legitimate to me. Later, the guy who gave up the deserved penalty got red carded, so we played short for a while. The only non-PK goal we gave up in the second half was because Mark misjudged where he was standing and let one roll in, thinking it was wide. Ooops - good thing it didn't really matter at that point. I did not play very well - lack of sleep and blood and ultimate on wednesday and all that stuff didn't help. Dave came back from his injury, which was nice. I think the next game will be a good test - is it just this team giving us problems or are we really not so good this season?

Brazil!

Well, the world cup is finally over. It was a lot of fun - especially as the first time I really followed it fromstart to finish. So I'll see all of you in Germany in 2006? I'll be the one with the head shaved to say "A" dressed all in white ("U" and "S" and blue and red were already taken...)

Third Place

They show every other game live, so why not the third place game? I was even awake when it was starting.

Oh well - at least I had fun staying up late.

Happy Anniversary to Me

I would also like to say that today is my 3 year anniversary with my current employer. 4 weeks of vacation, here we come...

You Love Milwaukee

I stumbled across this report of someone's trip to Milwaukee. I think you could probably find a little more interesting stuff if you get some good pointers ahead of time, but this was a great line: "The people were very pleasant, but, frankly, it's a kinda-depressing post-industrial city without a whole lot going on." Obviously, he is not a fan of transforming buildings, which should be the city's new theme, especially with this supposed Transformers nostalgia craze going on.

Auction Madness

I doubt I will have time to go to Berkeley's auction of old equipment from their physics department, and maybe that is a good thing. But it still sounds neat to me.

Projects

I'm sure I'm going to have lots of free time any day now, so here are some computer-y things I could do with that time:

• Add workflow capabilities to Moveable Type or maybe even some of the other things Mr. Layne suggested. It is similar to what I was working on for my own PHP review site - maybe it would be more useful to build it on top of MT.
• Adding RSS capability to my blog. Or just moving it to MT to get the RSS for free. Which I started once, but got frustrated with. Now that I am NS4-free, though, maybe I can make life worse for those people without feeling too guilty about it.
• Write a nice tab plug-in for jEdit. Because I am a geeky programmer, despite all this manager-y stuff at work.
• Get my damned video card fixed.
• Organize my mp3s better. I don't understand how my CDs can be better organized.

Chance of any of these being accomplished in the next month: 10%. Which is less than the chance of me buying some crazy japanese noise band cd in that time.

Movie Review: Minority Report (Spielberg) (Spoilers!)

Exactly what I expected - a technically well-made movie, with lots of interesting ideas about future tech, all supporting a weak, cliche story that goes on too long to try to give us a "happy ending". Thanks again, Mr. Spielberg, for not trying to challenge the audience. And thanks for the gratuitous use of slow zooms and oversaturated lighting, along with mindless emotional music swells to denote important scenes. No need for subtlety here!

Click the permalink to read the rest of my spoiler-filled ranting.

First, I should give credit for the nice work put into the design of a lot of the technology. Almost all of it was really well done, and not too much was overexplained, instead it blended nicely into a believable near-future world. However, it seems like a little more thought could have been put into the mechanics of the Precrime system. There were enough problems that I thought of as the movie was going that it prevented me from really paying attention to the storyline at times, but maybe that was an OK thing since the story was pretty predictable. Overly-evil federal agent was actually just doing his job? Kindly old man is the actual bad guy? What a shock!

First up, once they determine the abilities of these precogs and the reliability of them, it is surprising to me they were used for local policework and not immediately drafted into national security. Maybe that was some kind of political jurisdiction game that was part of the federal government interest in them, but it seems like they would have been extremely effective overseeing a battle. In any case, I can go along with this idea, but it makes me feel like this is a little unrealistic, or at least deserved to be touched on in some fashion.

But if you are going to start building a huge infrastructure based on the abilities of these three individuals, how could you not have plans for what to do once they die or lose their abilities or are no longer available for service? It seems like they would have been doing anything possible to create more precogs to be able to expand or stabilize the program. It also seems like a legal decision on the rights of the precogs would be an early thing to have happen, to prevent exactly the situation that occurred with the mother of the female precog. It does not seem a stretch to think that the government would find a way to conscript people whose abilities would be able to save so many people. And even if they had not done that up front, it seems like they would have legions of lawyers ready to fight any challenge to the custody - and why a police officer who felt it was so important to stop murders would resort to murder so quickly seems silly to me. And what did they expect to happen once the precogs (or even just one of them) died? People would be so used to not murdering it would never start again?

I know they tried to show the legal aspect of using the precogs by having the witnesses and the judge incolved, but I didn't buy why the "minority reports" and "echoes" were ignored. The woman doctor who "invented" the system could have easily discussed these items with the legal establishment that was figuring out how to incorporate this into the justice system. Why not only stop crimes where all three precogs agree? And doesn't this force a discussion of probability in the matter, since crimes where all three agreed were more likely to happen? And once we introduce probability of possible futures, incarcerating all of the people as if they had committed the crimes seems harsh. Especially with the crimes of passion, why not stop the crime and try some form of rehabilitation? Or some kind of assisted-living? Although it is probably not fair to argue the metaphysics a movie is based on, and this seemed to be firmly in a free will camp with no acknowledgement of probability. As for the echoes, it seems like a more formal analysis of whether something was an echo would occur, including a timestamp check, and in any case, all output of the precogs should have been recorded. That would have made an echo-murder much less likely.

I had a little problem with the precogs only being able to see murders, especially with the cheesy explanation one of the characters offered for it. I could dismiss that as just being that character's opinion - but then we learn the precogs out in the world were able to see other things in the future, which makes me question the consistency of the story.

And I was frustrated by the ending where the precogs live in the house reading books. Didn't they feel any guilt about not trying to help people in some way? Didn't they want to offer their services part time? If you could save lives in that direct a manner it seems like you should feel a little more obligated to do it. I guess this could be explained away through their upbringing or their harsh treatment earlier, but it bothered me.

Of course, the movie really should have ended when Tom Cruise's character was able to not murder the person at the time specified by the precogs. This would have left us with the "you have a choice" message and an understanding that the precog system would have to be stopped. Having to go through all those extra scenes of explanation at the end was a chore, and made the movie feel much less thoughtful. I guess I find it unbelievable that similar situations hadn't ever occured - not with the actual knowledge of the situation ahead of time, but it seems like the Precrime team would not have been able to find the location for a reasonable percentage of the crimes, and of those a few would not have happened and maybe most would have. Wouldn't that have invalidated the Precrime system, according to the end-scene logic?

I guess this all would have been more interesting to me if I didn't feel like I already struggle with the idea of free will when I think about how the universe works. But I do feel like a movie with this much budget and this many people working on it, that is clearly aspiring to be something above a "typical summer action movie" should have put a little more thought into these things.

Oh well.

Tonight I learned that there

Tonight I learned that there are such things as "3 on 3" ice hockey leagues.

I also learned I can sit through a whole game wearing a short sleeve shirt and not get too cold. Maybe I have not renounced all of my Wisconsin heritage!

News Sites

I'm trying to find a new site for headlines to replace CNN. I can't stand the msnbc page, bbc, sj mercury news seems too hit or miss, and I can't skim through the ny times fast enough.

I probably just need to stick with one long enough to get used to it - I think I had been reading cnn.com almost daily for 6 years.

Maybe I've just been online for too long.

Speaking of Movie Reviews

This is Paul Tatara's last review for CNN. He got to include a sidebar note, which I guess was nice, but it would have been even nicer if he could have really spoken his mind about why he got canned. I wish him the best of luck - it seems like there are pitifully few places to get a job writing about movies where you don't have to worry about upsetting the advertisers.

And some links:

• A list of all of his reviews(although it seems like goodauthority.org is not working as of this writing)
• Where to send cnn.com some mail about how they are ruining their site

Movie Review: The Bourne Identity (Liman)

I didn't expect much going in, but some friends I rarely see wanted to go, so I figured what the heck. It had Franka Potente in it, didn't it? And it was directed by the guy who directed Swingers, so maybe it would be ok. And it turned out to be OK. I'm not a Matt Damon fan, and after the first few scenes I worried that it was going to be a really long two hours. Some combination of less dialog, better dialog, Franka Potente, and some exciting action scenes made it seem better. There were a couple of slow stretches in the middle, and it was strange to see Julia Stiles used in a really minor role, but the movie overall worked as an action movie. It wasn't really "intelligent" but it held together reasonably enough for the most part, not taking itself too seriously but keeping it mostly believable. You could do worse for a big summer action movie.

Soccer: Loss (7-2)

First game of the summer season, and it took us a while to work things out, as the score indicates. The other team had more hustle and better 1-on-1 ball control skills. I really only felt guilty on one goal, where my header of a kick from their keeper went behind me instead of in front of me, leading to a break they converted. I think our team has potential, though, if we play the right people in the right places. Of course, I always think our team has potential at the beginning of the season.

Famous Friends

Maybe I should become an author, so I could become friends with other authors and read early copies of new William Gibson books (scroll to the last entry on June 23). Sounds like it should be an interesting book, though - Pattern Recognition is a good-sounding name to me. Of course, I have really enjoyed all of his novels, so I'm not too worried it would be bad. Maybe it is time for me to go reread some of the earlier ones.

Today's Quote

"Why sit still when you've got a swivelchair?"

- Franklin Bruno (in Nothing Painted Blue's Swivelchair from Emotional Discipline)

Dream notes

I took out the part where the pope walked past and we all worried he would trip over the cord of the halogen lamp in the hallway, because it really seemed to disrupt the story. But I thought it was a funny enough image I remembered it. So it will live in its own entry, right here. There was also something about some cds being left behind, but I wasn't quite sure how that fit in, so it got cut as well.

Just in case someone saw into my dreams and wonders what happened to those scenes.

Dream

"You should go with her."

"I'm sure she doesn't care if I go with."

"Chicken! Just go already."

"All right, I'll go."

I start running, down the stairs and through the door to the field outside where I see her getting on a bike. It's daylight already, and lots of people are out walking around. She slowly starts working her way through the crowd, weaving and turning to avoid running anyone over, standing up on the pedals to try to maximize her balance. She doesn't look extremely coordinated but never once makes it appear as if she isn't in complete control of what is going on.

I catch up to her as she is making her way through the last cluster of people before a nice sized open stretch in the middle of the field. She sees me and gives a little smile. I don't appreciate it as much as I should as my legs are starting to tell me I really should have stretched out before taking this jog, which is rapidly turning into more of a sprint. I decide to try saying something quickly, since I'm not sure how long I'll have enough breath to try to speak.

"I decided to, uhhh, walk you back, if you don't mind."

"Thanks."

I barely manage to keep up as we cross the open part of the field. She slows down a lot as another crowd of people is standing around on the other side near the fence. I catch up and get my breath back.

"The bad part of it, though, is that even in these spots where I can run faster I don't have any idea where we're going so I still need to let you lead."

She smiles again, and this time I can appreciate it properly. Who needs talking when you have eye contact? If only I was better at not looking away so quickly.

We get to the building and she effortlessly swings her legs off the bike and locks it up against a rack. I try to catch my breath again until we both head up the stairs together.

The building feels like a school or a library or some other large public building, built back when they either had more time or money to try to make the architecture look nice and feel substantial.

Her friends are all standing around in front of a large glass wall that appears to be our destination. Her friends don't seem to be standing in the line stretching away from the door in the glass wall, they just seem to be hanging out in the same hallway.

Lots of smiles and friendly greetings are exchanged, and I can only feel awkward since I don't know anyone. A few moments and she remembers to introduce me, and I begin to go around the circle shaking peoples hands. The last woman I am introduced to lightly brushes her hands across mine as she pulls her hand back afterwards, just enough extra contact to make me wonder what it means.

They tell her she'd better go get in the line right away so she isn't late, so there is another round of thanks and good lucks before she sneaks through the door. As she makes her way through the door she looks back to me, we lock eyes, and she gives a fantastic, take your breath away, smile. I reflexively smile back, and I wish I could give her the same quality of smile back instead of my usual goofy grin. Then she dissappears into the crowd of people inside.

I take a moment to look around, readjust to the setting once her presence is gone. I must feel more than I want to admit if she is distracting me this much from paying attention to anything else. I try to make small talk with the friends, but my mind is too busy racing through the possibilities to be able to do a convincing job of it. Eventually I fade into the background, observing the conversation more than being a participant of it.

Someday

I will be in a condition to post some real entries here.

No, really.

For now, I am just going to hope that the start of the summer soccer season goes well, and that I have plenty of time to catch up on sleep first.

Surreal

how do i know what to attribute to lack of sleep

slight misfiring between neurons

body out of balance

and what to attribute

to the strangeness of the situation itself

new people

new places

no direction

need more data

another try

more conducive to conversation

to really know

1-0

Well, the US didn't suck, but I can't say I am super-excited about having stayed up for the game right now. Better go get some sleep...

Catching Up

Maybe you can't ever really catch up. Maybe it is just the attempt that matters?

So we'll give it a shot here.

Some notes:

• Santa Barbara may not have the ethnic diversity of the bay area, but it sure has more women.
• One night of almost no sleep is not as disruptive as many nights in a row without enough sleep.
• I didn't know that a cable television hookup could be broken so that some channels come in really fuzzy, and some not at all.
• It is possible to make the drive home from Santa Barbara in under 5 hours, even with a little traffic.
• I finally got a CD burner. Watch out, world.
• Emotional state of being can affect your dance ability. But good shoes would still help.
• Moths are gross.
• It is nice to get email from people about something you wrote on your website.
• I can procrastinate cleaning even more than other things.
• Sometimes I am not sure where all the possibilities are.

2-0

And now I am very glad I got some people together to watch the game! Round of 8! That's crazy.

Productivity? Hah!

There are lots of things I should be doing after getting back from my weekend in SB, but instead of that I am trying to get some people together to watch the USA vs. Mexico tonight. Let's hope the game is on TV - either ABC/ESPN or Tivo messed up the schedule, and I didn't get to see most of the games I tried to record this weekend. Including the Germany game. No good at all! Good thing there is always the spanish-language station.

helpless

I am having a fine time in santa barbara, but I am concerned that I cannot access my email. Uh oh!

Write about what you know

Worst explanation of why soccer is not a good sport based on a bad, but not as bad article. The Washington Post article has a hint of trying to be funny at least. But you should at least try to understand a different point of view before dismissing it as "futile". Of course, it is usually more fun to read more positive things.

And now I need to go drive to watch the 4:30am US game.

Cook's Illustrated

This is a reminder for me to go look at Cook's Illustrated some more. A "Consumer's Report" for food-related items? Sounds interesting to me. They even have cookbook reviews.

Follow the Leader

After some strange World Cup-induced sleeping patterns, my day had that slightly surreal quality that is actually pretty entertaining once in a while. And after 3 dance classes, I am still enjoying it.

And here's some weblog responses that I should probably just send by email:

You can't force yourself to be recovered, but you do have to allow yourself to recover. What issues do you think you aren't addressing? It's normal to go through periods of doubt and negativity, but they should be generally decreasing in in intensity and frequency, at least over that stuff. And maybe being sick of it means you are done with it, as much as you can be done with anything from your past. And for as stupid and silly and crazy and untrustworthy people are, you can't forget that most people do also have good things about them somewhere in there. If you stop trying to find that goodness in some people, you are shutting yourself to lots of wonderful things. You may be strong enough to not need other people, but that shouldn't prevent you from enjoying the good in other people. Maybe it takes even more strength to try to rely on other people sometimes. I'm not sure I have a point here besides rambling sleepy-talk, but remember that all the beautiful art and music and books and tasty food and good conversation all requires other people in some way. And you don't want to give up on that stuff, do you?

There are always more new and interesting things out there to be found and tried and read and eaten and read and listened to and thought about...

We'll Never Learn

Here is the SF Chronicle's investigative report into how Ronald Reagan (running for Governor and then as Governor) and J. Edgar Hoover (as director of the FBI) forced out the UC Berkeley president and tried to eliminate campus protests. Why? Because the campus was a hotbed for communists, of course. I have little respect for politicians that win by attacking other groups instead of building an inclusive vision for the future. Free Speech is a wonderful thing. Having the FBI involved in secret dealings with political candidates and subversive tactics to stop demonstrations on a college campus are not wonderful things. It's not illegal for people to believe in and speak about other types of governments in our country. We should be trying to show why our system of government is good instead of trying to silence the discussion.

In any case, it is nice to see a little investigative reporting. I hope they don't try repealing the FOIA anytime.

World Cup

At least this time the game won't be at a completely absurd hour...

While poking around online, the generally decent soccernet.com site has the best world cup headline I have seen: "USA want pressure on balls". (insert appropriate middle school laugh track)

Movie Review: No Man's Land (Tanovic)

No Man's Land tells a story set during the Bosnian war, a setting with which I am becoming more familiar. Instead of trying to give an overview of the entire situation, it focuses on a specific event to use as an analogy for the whole war. Two soldiers, who under other circumstances could have been friends, are trapped in a trench, with one holding the other hostage and both worried about getting killed by either side. A third man lays trapped on a landmine, and no one seems to know how to help him. The local UN forces try to get involved, but the bosses are more concerned with politics and reputation than helping people. Reporters seem interested in their story most of all, but they do have a compassionate side as well. The movie seemed to stay surprisingly neutral about the two sides in the war, although maybe pro-Bosnian, although that could be my bias. But the resolution, while seeming a little absurd, did seem to sum up the whole war in some ways.

I'm not convinced this was a better movie than Amelie, though - it certainly had an advantage because it was about an important current-events topic. It is always hard to compare upbeat movies with depressing ones, too. But Amelie felt like something magical, and this felt a little bit too constructed, which to me makes it not quite as good. Of course, magic is constructed, too, but I still wasn't completely convinced.

The other comparison I made during the movie was to Safe Area Gorazde, and again it is a difficult comparison but probably not quite favorable to No Man's Land. SAG was able to give the broad perspective while highlighting lots of individual stories. Being based on actual events also made it more powerful. However, since that was my first exposure to the details of this situation, it has an advantage in how powerful it comes across.

In any case, it was a well-made movie, and worth watching to get a feel for the absurdity of war, and some of the realities of it. Unfortunately it isn't as far away as we like to think.

I should go live in a cave

Well, the new server is now preventing me from doing my email stuff properly, which is annoying. And now the cable is out, so I can't watch the world cup matches tonight. Argh. But the new surround sound setup the roommate got today is falling into place nicely.

Silly Network

The network ate all of my entries from the past few days - apparently part of the server IP address changes my ISP was making. They warned me this was going to happen, but apparently I wasn't paying enough attention to things. Oh well. I was able to dig out a cached copy and try to reconstruct things. Of course, this means it will take even longer for some of those embarrassing entries to scroll away...I appreciate your understanding.

Mozilla

And I almost forgot I had an actual link I wanted to post today. Mozilla 1.0 is out and you should download it. Fight the power. I've been using the inferior Netscape 6.2 at work a lot lately, and it has some neat-o things it can do, including rendering most pages quite nicely compared to blechy 4.x Netscape. The Mozilla flavor looks to be even nicer.

e-mail. email. electronic mail. e'mail. e mail.

I am, apparently, experiencing a lack of email motivation. Do I spend this time to fix that? No, I decide to write a little disclaimer/apology here instead. For the 2 of you that read this. Hey there

Maybe tomorrow I'll be more motivated, after dance class. (another thing for the list of things you never thought you would hear me say)

(and this is another reminder of why I should get more sleep before trying to write things on here. sumimasen.)

Book Review: 36 Views of Mount Fuji: On Finding Myself in Japan (Davidson)

Writing about other cultures is a tricky thing. How do you describe the insights you have about yourself and about your native culture and the new culture you are experiencing without overgeneralizing and making yourself seem really shallow? It seems obvious that even spending a whole year in another country isn't the same as growing up in that culture, but it seems like it should be long enough to be able to understand some of the fundamental differences in cultures. This book deals with a lot of these issues, since it is written by an American who goes to teach English at a Japanese university for a year, and at first I thought it wasn't handling them well. The book is mostly in chronological order, so it begins with descriptions of the author's first experiences as a gaijin teacher in Japan, and it falls into some of the traps without really seeming to acknowledge them. The writing style was entertaining enough to keep me going, but I was afraid I wouldn't be able to read too much in a sitting without getting a little frustrated. Time spent at a prestigious all-women's university in Tokyo is not a good way to get a deep understanding of all of Japanese culture. But as the narrative continued, she began to address more of these issues and after she came back to the U.S. the book became much more interesting. Instead of just being a travel memoir, it became a much more personal story about how a person can try to enjoy parts of multiple cultures and learn to live with some of the impossibilities of this. Subsequent visits to Japan helped her achieve a more multifaceted view of Japanese society, both from the environments she was able to see and the internal perspective changes as her reasons for visiting changed. And the book wound up holding my interest enough to get me to read the entire thing in a single day of airport travel. I think it did a good job of telling a story, giving a little insight into Japanese culture (although some of it seems dated by the mentions of the "Japanese economic miracle") and American culture, and providing a little inspiration to pursue some of those crazy dreams.

3-2

I may regret it tomorrow, but right now I am very happy I stayed up to watch the USA-Portugal game. Whoohooo!

Book Review: Globalhead (Sterling)

This is a short story collection of 13 independent, yet typically Bruce Sterling stories. Lots of neat ideas here - genetic manipulation gone awry to create intelligent animals, the impact of life-extending drugs on society, cold war Russian scientists doing advanced brain-manipulation experiments, RU-486 smugglers, alternate histories involving rock critics and cartoonists. The best stories show Sterling's gift at thinking about the social and cultural impacts of these steps beyond where things are now. The least effective stories for me were the ones that seemed to lack focus (Jim and Irene and THe Sword of Damocles, especially) and didn't provide any meaningful resolution. These stories were written between 1987 and 1992, and it is amazing to see how most of the topics are still meaningful today. Former Russian republics, Afghanistan, genetics, Islam, advances in neurobiology, Lester Bangs - lots of dealing with topics that came to mainstream attention much later. I think his short story work helps him find some of the themes and topics that he decided to address in more depth in his novels

Speaking of which, I really should catch up on some of his more recent work. This book helped remind me how much I enjoy reading his work.

Too Personal

Here's some notes from the trip, hope you don't mind too much:

• The first real interaction between my parents while I am home is a tense discussion about my mom's use of the brights while driving home from the airport.

• Conversation works best when discussing impersonal things - movies, local political scandals, gossip about distant relatives (complete with a level of condecension that made me uncomfortable!), Japanese, books, TV, the World Cup, California, and a little intellectual property law. No debate or discussion, though, just a trading of factoids and agreements.

• Mom made cookies.

• I don't go visit, but I do call to say I can't do anything. It is very weird. Weird to talk in my parents house, weird to talk to her, weird to feel all those memories becoming almost tangible in this environment. Weird to feel the details of the memories slipping away. Weird to see things change by staying the same.

• I don't feel at home.

• Comment removed for my own self-interest

• How about that Senegal? I should have brought that Duke Ellington CD.

• CNN's Airport channel is terrible, as are all the loud people talking on cell phones. Airports should be conducive to reading while you are waiting.

• Finally finished the Sterling book. He is such a cool writer.

• If I ever have to go live in WI again, I will get really fat.

• It is really hard to go talk to people when you are out with your parents.

• The new Art Museum was kind of neat, but having an exhibit about art museums was a little strange, and not very exciting. But having a Bill Viola exhibit was cool. And the new logo is pretty nice.

• Seeing my nephew less than once a year makes the changes seem much more dramatic.

• Late night soccer and homemade apple pie is a nice combination.

• Slovenia may not have won anyways, but that officiating didn't help.

• How could I not have learned the lesson that I would have to bring back more than I came with by now?

• I had my first margarita with the parents while out for lunch. I think I also learned a lesson about the importance of good tequila. Or a lesson about not having margaritas with breakfast. Not sure which, really.

• I appreciate the new security measures that allow only ticketed passengers in the gate area.

• I read an entire book in one day, which I have not done in a long time.

• Having dreams while on the plane is weird.

• An interesting plane conversation - it turns out that the 10th anniversery celebration for Public Allies was happening in Milwaukee this weekend. A good reminder about the wonderful ability we have in this country to try new things at different points in your life.

Cheesehead

Well, I made it back from the trip. Boring details to follow later, but I'll give you this one now: I got to see someone wear a cheesehead at the San Jose airport. Heh!