getting around here

Navigation stuff will likely go here. That would presume that there is actually real content...

Stuff that will (eventually) show up here will include:

Caught first (2005/01/24)

My aunt caught me... I haven't updated since my day off due to my attack. Rest assured, I'm back to normal, at least from anything from the concussion.

It's been pretty brutal at work, so the updates will be pretty minimal for the next week or so. Today was 11 hours with no downtime for lunch. Tomorrow will be likely be similar. Thanks for keeping me to my promise. Keep it up.

I've updated the article with the timeline of my recovery.

Apple reaction (2005/01/11)

I'm sort of interested in the Mac mini as a home server, but I'd want to put in a bigger disk. As far as the other stuff, the Shuffle is good for the platform, but not for me. I like that iPhoto 5 has now; I may want to end up using that. I need Office [1] for other stuff, so iWork doesn't interest me, especially because it doesn't include a spreadsheet, which I use out of Office more than anything, besides Entourage [2].

[1] No PageRank For You, Microsoft!

[2] For now.


Little regression (2005/01/11)

I woke up this morning a little worse than I started the day on Monday, so I figured I pushed myself too much. I stayed at home all day today doing brain-minimal stuff. Slept in, as I tossed and turned last night. Folding laundry. Lots of web surfing catching up and checking out the new Apple kit [1]. Watching college hoops on the Replay. Tweaked the pages some. [2]

Stuff seemed like it did on Sunday, so I may try a half day tomorrow if I'm back to where I was. There was a lot of stress yesterday that hopefully I can deflect if/when I go back. We'll see how I feel when I wake up and how it goes.

[1] It's not looking like I'm going to get to MacWorld, which is a bummer, but I'm not in a hurry to buy anything anyway.

[2] At least for now, I'm trying to tweak and improve my HTML skillz as I make updates. Or build out pieces parts.


Non-random kindness (2005/01/10)

For those of you who I told for one reason or another, thank you for your notes or words of support. Work today was tough and I had to leave early. I probably shouldn't have gone in right away, but I had some bugs that I was in the middle of fixing. At least those are done now, so there's no pressure on me specifically to get stuff done. Just hope that Simon doesn't get slammed.

I owe an update for the Wednesday (junior) high school get-together, but I'm too tired to do it justice now.

Random acts of senseless... (2005/01/08)

[Embargoed until Monday so as to inform my parents] Usually these days, you see those words associated with "kindness" or something else cute. Unfortunately, I have to return to the original phrase today...

Read more...


SFMOMA trip report (2005/01/02)

Carla got a SFMOMA membership for the year from her mother as a Christmas gift, so I got to be the first guest on her membership and we enjoyed it for a couple hours today.

It turned out I enjoyed the Glamour exhibition most of all. While I virtually ignored all the "fashion" parts, which most people would associate first with "glamour", but really enjoyed the industrial design and the architecture sections. Design has always been the most intrguing art discipline to me.[1].

Two pieces in that exhibit made an impression on me. The Aegis Hyposurface is an active wall that responds to some set of inputs, originally designed for sound, and warps, bends and changes color. The piece only exists as a video of the wall, not the actual wall itself. But even then you could see the coolness of it. I'm guessing it's even better in person. Their web site doesn't even do the video justice.

You can see a little more of lattice archipelogics. The animation is a little confusing and it's a lot better when you are interacting with the elements in person. I think this is less interesting for the algorithm that they are using to light the piece but instead of a mechanism so that individuals can create their own gestures to manipulate their environment. X10 systems have rudimentary aspects of this, but the piece implied that more degrees of freedom are possible.

(They also had pictures of Rem Koolhaas' Seattle's new public library, but we have better ones from our trip back at the end of May as it was opening. We'll try to bring them to you here. Ours aren't as good as the current link, but better than the exhibit had.)

We also visited a couple rooms of typography, a disappointing gallery of mid 70s photos[3] and Yet Another Roy Lichtenstein show[4] and a couple other installations that don't need any other attention.

[1] Starting from my PageBreaker days on The Chief[2] at Fremont High School.

[2] Now it's the Phoenix News. Blech. Goes along with the crappy "Firebirds" mascot.

[3] I thought it was going to be actually of Los Alamos, New Mexico, and of the US nuclear testing program like 100 Suns was.

[4] Yes, Pop is not just Lichtenstein, but this seems like a little bit of overkill.


Help move me (2005/01/02)

For now, everything is being done manually, but I'd like to be able to move to Blosxom or one of its relatives. in the long run, I want to run my own box locally so I have complete control and can run whatever software and provide whatever content I want, in addition to allowing me to get around any employer-enforced restrictions on personal email. In the meantime, this will require moving off my current decrepit ISP (Netgate, who doesn't get my PageRank) and on to something a little more current. Any pointers to cheap hosting providers who provide POP mailboxes and let you run Perl (first), Java and/or anything else would be appreciated.

Hopefully I'll pick something in the next week or so and then start migrating. Because there is very little pointing to the webspace right now besides the top level domain, I don't really care if the web space is offline for a few days.


Reboot part V (2005/01/02)

OK, for those of you who follow the slim pickings around here, you know I've talked and talked about making something regular about this site. Well, it's all about making commitments and sticking to them. So I would be happy to hear from anyone who catches me not posting every two or three days from here on out.


A new year (2005/01/02)

Carla and I started our 2005 in beautiful San Leandro, California at Carla's friend's Wes and Jen. It was a small gathering, but we got down to the 80's sound. There wasn't anything spectacular, but it was fun and that was the important thing.


who knows what goes here?

On this chunk, there will probably be links to all the (periodical) media that I normally consume to get the info that I regurgitate to put here, outside of the occasional original thought. Stuff like websites, newsletters, magazines, television, radio, the occasional newspaper, the (currently less occasional) newspaper, or whatever else regular jumble of bits happen to float through my head. This is so I can conform to Standard Blogging Format. But this isn't going to scale to other chunks of the site, so this might not be elsewhere.

Does it validate? Who knows?


Is this at the bottom? If it is (when there's enough stuff in the center column...), this is where my copyright, colophon, badge list, privacy, and any other fine print that you should read will go. For now, it's all... copyright Jason Untulis 1997-2005. So there.