What the Hell is happening in the World of Howard?

• Howard spent the day at OMSI with the kids. Space exhibit was pretty good, but seeing Roving Mars on the OmniMax was fabulous. (Written 16 hours ago)
• Howard found the thyme in the back of the garden. Guess making the vegan cream of mushroom soup is now possible. (Written yesterday at 6:40pm)
• Studies suggest Didgeridoo playing could improve sleep apnea, and to think I'm going in for surgery next week. ff.im/-fx1ki (Written yesterday at 2:19am)
• RT @OpenJonathan: Today's my last day at Sun ... ff.im/-fp9jw (Written 3 days ago)
• Howard had a hip cramp. Never had one of those before. At least not a stabbing pain like in the back. Regardless, what a poor design. (Written last week)

Today's Shared Web Sites

• Studies suggest Didgeridoo playing could improve sleep apnea, and to think I'm going in for surgery next week.

  Meh. I'll do both.

• RT @OpenJonathan: Today's my last day at Sun ...

• Only 120 color choices? Try compromising on the paint for your bedroom walls.

  Actually RadioLab's program on choices was quite good.

• wonders where the scorn for Haiti is coming from.

  I'm glad to see our moral imagination finally enlarging to include an island nation with a ill-founded reputation.

• Don't have to look too far to see homophobia as a principal mover and shaker in "conservative" politics.

  "Do you believe that homosexuals are 12 times more likely to molest children?" "Yeah, based on the different literature that I have read," Tam replied. ...when pressed Tam to cite books, articles or authors he had read to substantiate the views, he could not remember specifics."

Social networking has added a strange, but disconcerting aspect to relationships when a friend can no longer update his site.

If Darol were still around, he'd get a chuckle out of this, tho. I know, I will.

Been enjoying the 2009 version of the Skeptics Mix Tape, which I came across from Swoopy's endorsement on the Skepticality Podcast. I especially like this Jonathan Coulton guy… His website show how funny (and how prolific) he is. Love his song about zombies:

All we want to do is eat your brains We're not unreasonable, I mean, no one's gonna eat your eyes

Will I see you at this OSCON 09 this year? Hope so. You can catch a sneak preview of my presentation. Love to get feedback.

Found out that someone did something very similar last year. Mine, however, will emphasize what it will take to get girls interested in computer science, engineering, physics and science in general… yeah, I have some ideas on that subject.

Maybe writing my own blogging software was not the smartest thing to do. Now, I have no one to complain to but myself, and I'm too busy to fix it.

Guess I better flip on log4j…

Oh yeah, now I remember why I usually leave that off.

Father's Day? Yeah, very nice. My kids got me something for the barbeque and made some nice cards. They then took me to Benihana's along with all the other dads in the family. The kids loved the show, and have been practising with knives ever since.

Since it was the first nicedry day we've had in weeks, I joined all the dads in the neighborhood in mowing our lawns.

My session went well, I met a lot of great people, and had a great time at the conference. Hopefully, I'll see you all again next year. If you missed the talk, you can read it online.

Tonight the Easter Bunny is hiding the eggs good…too good. The wee ones will need hints. Here is one to get them to look under the cushions of a chair in the toyroom:

If you're a dime
Without worry or care
Snug in dad's pocket
Who sat down in a chair

You might slip out
Hiding down here with the crumbs
Near blocks and toys
Underneath everyone's bums

You may remember the other day, when I mentioned that my daughter wanted me to make some homework for her for Spring Break. Because I was lazy, one of the things on her list was to play a game of chess.

As soon as I started, my boy wanted to play a game as well. Why not play two games as one time? So we set up two boards, and I gave them both my queens and rook, and sat down.

I've heard of Grand Masters playing 40 games at once, but I'm not Grand Master (even though my children think so. But they'll be crushed my other lies of Santa and other lies that are far worse).

This distraction of two games was pretty difficult, and trying to checkmate the king with knights and bishops was even worse. Soon my daughter blindsided me and won by pinning my king on the back row and moving a pawn down to promotion.

With one game out of the way, I could then concentrate on my boy. For 5 years old, he plays a mean game, and it took a lot of work to finally get him. He demanded a rematch, so we've been playing games all weekend. He's pretty proud of himself that he's beat his old man twice, and has been swaggerin' around the house taunting me, "I beat my daaaaad, I beat my daaaaad."

Appears that I've created a monster.

"Suddenly I understood that we must take care of things just because they exist."

Someone on Reddit posted this question:

Around the world billions of people draw great strength and comfort from believing in God. Why would you want to take that from them? Give me a sound reason.

To which, marsvolta replied:

I can draw up a religion that will be far greater, kinder, and morally superior to every other religion on Earth. It will grant everlasting happiness through eternity for those who act selflessly and with compassion. My religion will be all the good parts of our current religions, without any of the bad parts.

Will you and your fellow theists subscribe to my religion, merely because it is useful and comforting?

Point well taken, but I dare say that many people are doing just that. They are creating watered-down versions of Christianity that are tolerant, accepting, and against proselytizing.

Hrm. It appears that Julian Baggini and Jeremy Stangroom (editors of Philosophers' Magazine) have beaten me to the punch with this game.

I've been wanting to synchronize my online droppings… I mean, everything gets dropped here, but no one bothers with web pages… or even RSS feeds, anymore. Its all Facebook and Twittering with the twats (that is John Cleese's terminology, not mine).

The problem is there are so many to choose from and I can't bother to post to every social networking site. Ping.fm is nice, but not complete. FriendFeed looks promising as well, but it doesn't seem to work that well.

Just wondering if anyone has some perspective. Other than, if you write it, they will come.

Happy New Year!

"In all affairs, it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted."

If somebody thinks they're a hedgehog, presumably you just give 'em a mirror and a few pictures of hedgehogs and tell them to sort it out for themselves.

I whole-heartedly agree with that sort of philosophical approach to evangelizing one's position. The question remains whether writing a small collection of essays violates this principle.

Why yes, my book is coming along quite nicely. If you would like to review and comment, I'd appreciate it. guest/guest

Art is dangerous. It is one of the attractions: when it ceases to be dangerous, you don't want it.

I should say that I could improve upon this quote: "when it is owned, you don't want it" as it seems to me that art is more desirable when it is rare and hard to get. Think about that the next time you restart that your band in your garage.

"I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it." - Mark Twain

Does this remind you of anyone?

Finished. Spent hours going through the countless initiatives placed on the ballot this year. Now that I've mailed in my ballot, all I have left is a pile of discarded booklets and papers. My daughter, however, is enjoying all the documents and is now playing "kid voter".

It was really funny to overhear a discussion between my 7 year old daughter and her friend over who they were supporting for president. These kids sure pick up on the concerns of their parents.

T: Hey do you know if there is a taste difference between swiss chard and red chard?

Me: I really don't know, as I haven't had either enough to know. The great god google will know. He knows all.

T: I googled it and it's not there.

Me: My faith has been shattered. I am, once again, an atheist.

T: Tell me about it.

Lightning crashes, a new mother cries
Her placenta falls to the floor
The angel opens her eyes
The confusion sets in
Before the doctor can even close the door

Lightning crashes, an old mother dies
Her intentions fall to the floor
The angel closes her eyes
The confusion that was hers
Belongs now, to the baby down the hall.

Look at nature - in all its beauty, ugliness, sweetness, brutality, charm, indifference and immense variety - and the idea that it manifests conscious design or purpose, still less intelligent design, is seen for what it is: a little driblet of childish ignorance; a mark of mankind's infancy.

Speaking of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, some internet facade named, Crystos, said:

This is a stupid Internet Meme that has somehow turned into some kind of religion. Ranting at them is not going to help.

Before you ask, yes, I am Christian and believed Jesus died on the cross for all of us because he loved us that much.

If I may ask, though, would the FSM willing give up his own son (if he even has one) for a multitude of people who hate him, despise him, aim to obliterate his very existence? Even if this act only saved one person?

To which, I responded:

His Starchiness is most generous and loving and would go to any lengths to sustain the world's creations (everything except actually intervene in a physical sense, mind you, since there is absolutely no evidence for supernatural phenomenon).

But His Pastiness did not create a situation in which it was necessary to kill anyone. His Noodliness did not create humans and set them up to sin in the beginning, so there was no reason to concoct a scheme of redemption. This is where thinking ahead can help your end-game.

Read the exciting discussion in its entirety.

After my wife's sister was diagnosed with breast cancer, we finally woke up to the issue that lots of women without insurance are not getting checkups. In fact, her sister almost didn't get her first checkup that showed her that she had cancer. So as a family, we accepted the challenge to raise funds to support the Komen Portland Race for the Cure®.

Yeah, I actually preferred the "Sleep In for the Cure" version, but my 7 year old daughter insisted that we actually go down for the race. Of course, with a child on each hand, I probably won't be doing the full run, but hey… an A for Affort, right?

So feel free to pop by and donate to this cause.

When she grows up, my daughter wants to be a marine biologist. When my son grows up, he wants to be a juggler. Should I be concerned?

I was headed downtown to hook up with my sisters for dinner and drinks, and while waiting for the train, an inebriated man walked off the platform and fell onto the tracks. I yelled to the man to get off the tracks, but while he wasn't hurt, he wasn't coherent.

While the trains normally can stop if something is on the tracks, at this particular point, the tracks were coming around a bend and through a short tunnel… all of which made me nervous for the next train (coming in 3 minutes) to stop in time.

So, I jumped down to help him. He wasn't responding, so I dragged and pulled him onto the platform… dead weight. After I did, he just said, "Thanks." By this time, so other people saw what was going on, and called for some official help. An interesting way to start the evening.

Whew! Reformatted all my quotes for your reading pleasure. Yes, your welcome.

Sounds like a platitude, but all people want the same things, however, we all just have different paths we think we will take us there.

I guess I'm just in one of those moods after watching Matt Harding dance around the world.

It has become clear to me that just as Twitter is starting to get some momentum, the annoyances and server downtime has become unbearable. So… I've switched. Plurk is more reliable and funner.

Plurk is missing certain features and third party apps… no problem, really, as it has rss feeds . So, while I use Sage (a sidebar plugin for Firefox ) for reading my news (er… comics) once a day, I use RSS Menu for high-priority rss feeds, as it has a pretty good array of notifications.

Couple it with Growl , and you have the making for some seriously annoying do-anything-but-work distractions. I guess it is a good thing that few people I know are plurking … yet.

"For the meaning of life differs from man to man, from day to day and from hour to hour. What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person's life at a given moment." –Viktor E. Frankl

Sounds very existential. I need to include that quote (and the idea) in my new book.

I'm now done with running a series of chess clubs at my daughter's elementary school. Next year, I'm thinking of teaching programming disguised as Making Movies on the Computer. I think I'll be using Scratch or Alice . Suggestions anyone?

Huh … so I rewrote my little update script from last week to use Java's AWT instead of Swing. Now, the little TextArea can take advantage of Apple's services… like spell check.

Once again, I'm not sure what Swing really gives a serious UI developer who doesn't care about skinning his app (which no one should ever do … EVER!)

Been working on a groovy little script to make it as easy to publish new items to my "home" page as it is to twitter.

Hrm. Note to self. Need to integrate the dictionary and Apple services to this Swing text area. Perhaps I should bypass swing altogether and use the AWT or SWT widget set. Dunno … I would have guessed it would take care of it all by itself.

Today is Pocket Poem Day, where I'm to understand, each of us is to stuff our favorite poem in our pocket and regale our fellow humans. Last night, my daughter and I spent the evening finding her favorite. I believe mine would have to be this one I wrote myself.

I'm still not getting it when it comes to Twitter.

I do think I need a quicker way at updating this page. Of course, does any one read home pages any more? What if I had a special RSS stream of this stream of consciousness? Not everyone has a plethora of different RSS readers, tho…

Hrm.

The following story was taken from Whiskey River…

Joshu asked Nansen: "What is the path?"
Nansen said: "Everyday life is the path."
Joshu asked: "Can it be studied?"
Nansen said: "The more you study, the further you get."
Joshu asked: "If I do not study, how can I know it is the path?"
Nansen answered, "The path does not belong to things seen: nor to things unseen. It does not belong to things known: nor to things unknown. Do not seek it, study it, or name it. To find yourself on it, open yourself as wide as the sky."

Yes, "Cognition is a delusion and noncognition is senseless." (from this version).

I think that at least one easter egg should contain an insulin shot. Hrm … I feel an essay coming on.

This evening at the dinner table, my daughter was asking about cholesterol, and I said that it can lead to things like heart attacks.

"Oh," she said, "for heart attacks can kill you, like my cousin's cat, Shadow. For her cat is dead, and is now in heaven."

My 4 year old son interrupted and said, "No, Shadow's dead and disappeared. He's not in heaven."

"No," my daughter countered, "he's in heaven."

This went back and forth as it does in children of this age until my son replied, "Where is Shadow? Do you see him? He is disappeared. Do you see heaven around here? If you don't see it, it doesn't exist." QED.

I then had to interrupt, "Kids, this argument has been going on for well over two thousand years, and no one has solved it yet, so let's argue about something else."

Sorry, can't write much … too busy building an ark. Good thing we've been killing off species right and left (let's hear it for mass extinction!), otherwise, this ark would be fookin' huge. I mean, can you imagine having to hold a wooly mammoth, mastodon AND a standard elephant. I mean, this sort of thing was easier when we could just keep a few dinosaur eggs warm and be good.

Don't tell anybody this, but the last time, the weasels got loose and destroyed quite a few of the dinosaur eggs. Just as good tho … some of those raptors were mean. You'd be plowing your field and if you didn't keep looking around for those feathers sticking out in the tall grass, you wouldn't make it back to the house.

A well known Buddhist story kinda goes like this:

Two monks were washing their bowls in the river when they noticed a scorpion that was drowning. One monk immediately scooped it up and set it upon the bank. In the process he was stung. He went back to washing his bowl and again the scorpion fell in. The monk saved the scorpion and was stung again. The other monk asked him, "Why do you continue to save the scorpion when you know its nature is to sting?"

"Because," the monk replied, "to save it is my nature."

Mix that with Satre's Existentialism, and you've got the makings for some good mental stew … So? What's your nature?

So my daughter talked me into starting a chess club at her elementary school. How fun will that be. I'm a terrible chess player, but I'm sure I can encourage the children… maybe even stay 1 step ahead. Anyway, I've put all my presentations online if you want to look at them and use them in your own chess club.

I didn't realize that T-Rex used their six-inch long serrated teeth to eat coconuts. Why is it that these people don't realize that the most obvious conclusions are generally the right one?

However, I must take exception on this based solely on consistency. If raptors were cavorting around Eve without even thinking of eating her, then obviously, this diarama is something shown during their brief stay in the Garden of Eden. And if so, this Eve is a bit too… er, covered.

That's right. For consistency, this diarama needs some full frontal nudity.

Was the birth of a baby, conceive in ecstasy
Sole purpose to be wasted in Bush's war?
Like a brick of bills on a pallet of gold?
They fight tyranny with tyranny
All in the name of someone's god.

While January 2009 will mark the end of a mistake, it will take many years to clean up the mess. But the immorality of it all will last even longer.

Happy Tax Day. Are you proud of how we spend your money?

"They might meet for lunch at the cafe, but a lunch hour isn't long enough to get the unimportant things said. The talk that counts is the talk that doesn't matter, and to get that you need time to spare."

A friend of mine sent me a link an essay, "Too Clear for Comfort" By Douglas Rushkoff and wondered what I thought of it. I'm sure you can't wait to eavesdrop on this conversation…

I'm starting to hear things like this. Obviously, we don't know what will bring on the death of civilization as we know it, but I too, am sure it will be color TV. I just read an article the other day on Slate about how porn stars are finding it difficult to make a good film for HDTV, since it can show up every wrinkle and every crooked pubic hair.

All of a sudden, these men and women are looking real, and we can't have that. I guess that was really the appeal of Playboy … airbrushing out the details, to make it more of an unrealistic fantasy.

But I wonder what we will think of these stars and celebrities when we realize that they really are just ugly people who can't act? Since natural breasts are making a come-back in porn because of the scars, maybe we'll start to return to having normal people portray normal people instead of over-paid, neurotic, scientologists with no grasp of reality.

So I'm taking a picture of the kids, but with auto-focus turned on, and the kids zipping around the room like a poodle after a double-shot of espresso, I can never know what actually makes it in field.

So, after loading the pictures, I notice that I've taken a picture that actually has a book floating in mid-air! I know, I feel the same way… this is the perfect picture to foist upon the Internet to prove the existence of ghosts… the problem is, it looks Photoshopped. Damn.

Trying to clean up my office, I pulled out a piece of paper where I had scribble the following message:

Every idea is defined by its relations.
Pure being and Nothing are the same
Pure being without relating it to something else doesn't exist and therefore, has no meaning whatsoever.

Uhm… yeah, yeah, what I said.

Been re-reading Stephen Jay Gould's Since Darwin. It is dated, but still fabulous. Great ideas to listen to while your working out. Oh, did I say I was reading?

Year's end,
all corners
of this floating world, swept.
          –Basho

po: cultural fact about iraq (and beduin in general): sunni and shiite alike find it difficult to trust men without facial hair

matt: that's strange, i find it difficult to trust men with facial hair. i am convinced that the truth, like soup, gets lost in there

howard: excuse me, I appear to be busy picking this honorable carrot from my whiskers.

What a nice birthday present. It is always good to know that others recognize you as high maintenence.

After enduring St. Nick for a few weeks (and it isn't even Thanksgiving), all I can say is, "How long does it take you Christians to shop?!"

(Yes, I did steal this joke from Frank Black, but my wife thinks I made it up, so please don't tell her.)

My poems are like one's own children. Each has special qualities that maybe only the author can see. And even though only a few still speak, albeit weakly, it is difficult to delete one's children from your hard drive. Enough with that analogy.

I've been going through my collection of Poems and have really enjoyed going through and reformatting and general touch-up.

I wish I wrote more poems. But as Robert Graves once said, "There are no married poets."

While I was at work, I was adding a new document in our "Wiki". I was half-way through when I had to go to a meeting. Being a dumb webapp, there is no "Save", only "Publish", and not wanting to submit a half-baked draft, I just left it for the meeting.

When I returned, Windows (for who knows what reason) rebooted itself. When I realized that I had just lost my work, I yelled and screached northward toward Redmond. After resigning myself to my fate, I logged in and started up Firefox v2. It asked me if I wanted to restore my session. Nice, I thought it remembered my tabs, so I clicked "OK" and to my amazement, it had also saved and restored the text in the Wiki.

Along with finally having spell checking in text widgets, saving that textual data between sessions is Firefox 2's best (and most overlooked) feature.

Is religion an "antiquated notion" of belief in literal perspectives of mythological stories that is benign and will eventually be phased out as an enlightened society matures? Or is it a scourge and disease that must be actively eradicated to protect our society? In this interesting article, Gary Wolf talks with Richard Dawkins and others about how the maddness of religion needs to stop.

I'll admit that being a deep agnostic, I've always been on the fence feeling that tolerance in an example worth setting. But as the religionists begin to arm themselves with suicide bombers, nuclear warheads, and the American military, I may have to rethink my position.

Don't be satisfied with [their] stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth… so everyone will understand the passage, we have opened you.

This famous quote of Rumi was taken from the poem often called, Unfold Your Own Myth. For the complete poem as well as my commentary, see this thought. Looks like I need to reformat that one.

To Do List

Create a To Do List
Add little boxes to check off
Add To Do List to web site
Create content

I've brought over all my children stories from the old site and old format and into this new. They are pretty cute, however, my daughter and I have moved beyond those to more sophisticated adventures. Someday, I'll have to upload the novel that we've created.

And now it's time for a little ear worm. Sing along and get this stuck in your gray matter…

Lemon tree, very pretty
And the lemon flowers are sweet
But the fruit from the lemon
Is impossible to eat.

Rinse and repeat, ad nauseum.

Have you ever felt like writing a book? Me neither. However, telling people at a cocktail party that you're an author seems like da bomb. So, thanks to the good people over at lulu.com or some other of these "self publishing" companies, I think I will.

However, I feel somewhat like Steven Wright, who said:

I'm writing a book. I've got the page numbers done, so now I just have to fill in the rest.

I figured, however, that I should be able to create a filter that takes my web site, renders it into docbook, which translates into a PDF, which I can then upload and turn into a hardcover that will look great on coffee tables all over… my house.

I'm sure my mother would buy a copy. Of course, I'm not sure I want her to read it. She might think less of me.

My anniversary was today. The baby sitter fell through. The boy came down with a cold, which scares away the in-laws. Spent most of the evening wiping snot. Did we actually get to eat together at dinner, or did we alternate taking care of the kids? Now, exhausted, you crash into a deep slumber, and I wonder if we'll get out next weekend.

Happy Anniversay, Babe. I wouldn't trade this for the world.

While having a "tea party" with my children, I told them about a party I had been to when the hostess had a bowl full of quotes, poems and other thoughts as conversation starters. My daughter thought that was a great idea and wanted that for her new tea party with her friends.

Now I'm left with the problem of making a bowl of conversation starters for 5 year olds.

Cute face, picture flash
Capturing the moment
But without the essence of why.

During a routine eye exam, my doctor noticed that I didn't blink all the way down my eyeball, and suggest that I "work on that." How the hell do you practice blinking? I've been trying, but it almost seems like a meditation exercise… you know, to practice something that you do automatically and without thinking.

Go ahead, now you try it.