Losing Muscle

Over the past week or two, I have run into people that I haven't seen in a while. And a couple of them commented that I looked like I lost weight.

To be honest, I never really know what to think when people say things like that. Did I look fat before? Do I really look like I have lost weight, or are they just saying something nice?

My clothes still fit exactly like they did before, so it's not like anything has dramatically changed. And I know that I have lost some weight over the past year. The bad news is that I suspect it has almost entirely been muscle loss. In other words, I'm becoming one of those thin fat people.

I know one or two guys that are either at or near their ideal body weight. And they look anorexic next to the rest of us.

Beatboxing with Musical Instruments

Last week, I discovered that there are a bunch of videos on YouTube that feature musicians beatboxing while using musical instruments. So, I started wasting tons of time, looking at beatboxing videos.

For instance, here is one in which Greg Patillo is beatboxing while playing the flute:


And here's one of someone beatboxing while playing the harmonica:



Pretty amazing stuff.

Binary Watches

Two years ago, Heimlich bought me a binary clock [thinkgeek.com] as a gift (I have the silver one). And I love it, because it is so sleek and modern-looking. (and, let's face it, because it is geeky.)

I actually have a small collection of weird clocks. And I don't know why I like them so much, but I do.

Ever since I got that binary clock, I have wanted a binary watch. Recently, I did a search to see if there were any more on the market, and I was shocked to find that Altivo Timepieces actually make an entire line of binary watches [altivo.com].


However, there are several things that I don't like about these watches. The first is that there are numbers printed next to each LED. The second is that the lights are LEDs that are not always on. Each time you want to check the time, you have to hit a button, and the LEDs will come on. This system is necessary, because having the LEDs on all of the time will drain the batteries too quickly. I suppose that it is too expensive to create a custom display in this size category without using LEDs.

Other than those two details, I think that in general, those are attractive watches.

Obnoxious Drunks

Heimlich and I went to another wedding this weekend.


At the reception, we were seated at a table where none of the couples knew each other. However, we had a blast, because it turns out that everyone else at our table were fun people. So fun, in fact, that I am sure that we rapidly became known as "the table of obnoxious drunks":


I'm sure that it was no coincidence that we ended up at the same table. And it was either great planning, or the biggest mistake ever, that our table was directly next to the bar.

At one point in the evening, we were trying to guess the professions of everyone else at the table. My initial guesses included mortician, bail bondsman, exotic dancer, and airport baggage handler. Unfortunately, all of those were insanely wrong... which is really too bad, because I have tons of questions saved up for a bail bondsman, if I ever run into one.

Pictures of Pet Fish

It seems like wherever we go these days, people are whipping out their cell phones to show us pictures of their dogs. It's unbelievable.

Heimlich and I have decided that we're going to try to take pictures of our fish on our cell phones to show them whenever people do that.


It'll be funny, just for the weird reactions that I'm sure we're going to get. I mean, it's almost exactly the same thing - people pushing pictures of their pets in your face. But somehow, I don't think anyone else will see it that way.

In other news, I have been slowly transitioning over to new gravel over the past 2 months:


The old gravel is on the far left. The new gravel is reddish-brown. I think that it looks a lot more natural. The darker color should also bring out more color in the fish. They seem to like it so far.

Realistic Action Movies

This weekend, I rented Man on Fire [imdb.com], with Denzel Washington (as in, the movie contained Denzel Washington. I didn't mean to imply that BFF Denzel and I rented a movie together this weekend).

Anyway, whenever I see an action movie these days, I end up getting kind of fed up at how formulaic and unrealistic they are. I mean, c'mon... Ever action movie has to contain one female lead, who looks like a model and who the protagonist inevitably falls in love with? Or the main character has some crackpot theory which no one believes (and they have no evidence to support), and they are vindicated in the end? They all seem like they have the same plot.

Then it occurred to me that they might be better than the alternative. I mean, what if they really did create an action movie that was realistic for my life? I would come up with some crackpot theory that no one would believe, and then you would find out at the end that I was just totally wrong the whole time.

We'd have to work in a scene where the female lead is dangling over the edge of a cliff (or out of a helicopter) or something, and one of my hands is the only thing keeping her from falling. Except that I haven't worked out in a decade, so I have no upper body strength, and she would end up dying (which is fine, because she thought that I was a creepy asshole in the first place).

At the end, there would be a standoff between me and the antagonist. The tension builds until I arrive at the antagonist's house and try to kick in the door. But after the 8th kick, I would decide that it would probably be easier to throw a rock through a window and climb in.

I would then run through the antagonist's house, guns in both hands ablazing, and trip while running up the steps. Then there would be a slow motion action scene where I am twisting my ankle and falling down, but still trying (and failing) to shoot at the antagonist. I would end up hitting myself in the face with one of the guns, and realize that this isn't working and give up. In the final scene, I would be skulking home in my '92 Toyota Tercel.

Human Perception of Area and Volume

Recently, I was talking with some people about Japanese-style lunch jars [amazon.com] and Chinese take-out containers.


The conversation centered on how those containers are really deceptive in how much food they contain. Whenever I end up with a full Chinese take-out container, it looks like (to me) it will only be enough for one more meal, but I always end up getting three meals out of it. Whereas when I see a plate of food, I have a pretty good idea about how many meals it will feed me for.

I ended up arguing that humans must be much better at estimating area than they are at estimating volume. Hence the reason that you can judge a plate of food reasonable accurately, but when you look at a Chinese takeout container, your estimates are usually way off.

I tried to look for a reference in which this type of study had been performed (it must have been at some point, I would think), but I didn't end up finding anything useful.

Although, in my search, I did find this book chapter [auckland.ac.nz], which contains a whole bunch of really interesting optical illusions (most of which I had never seen before).

Picture of take-out boxes courtesy of hfabulous's Flickr photostream [flickr.com].

Lifestyle Malls

I realize that I am probably years behind on this subject, but I hate all of these Lifestyle Malls [cnn.com] that they are building now. Regular malls aren't enough of a horror show, so they have to find a way to make the malls even more annoying.

Am I the only person who hates these things? When I think of a mall, I think of a large interior space that you can wander around, and look in a bunch of stores. These new Lifestyle Malls have all of the storefronts facing the outside of the buildings. So, you have to walk around outside to go from store to store. You have no choice, even when it's hot and humid out, or rainy, or snowing, or whatever. And it's not like Ohio has great weather. We're not in Southern California. 80% of the days here are either hot and humid, or cold and raining. The thought of having to walk around in that is not going to put me in the mood to shop.

The article I linked to above has the following paragraph:

"Developers want to take shopping centers closer and closer to where the affluent, professional people live," he said. "Lifestyle centers are a means to that end. Their location is convenient to consumers because you can drive right up to the shops and park the car."

That is a complete crock. The malls are less dense (due to all of the internal streets that have to snake through), and the surface area to volume ratio is all screwed up, meaning that (in my experience) you have to park really far away, and walk a lot further to get to the stores you want.

When I'm walking around a regular mall, the storefronts are totally open, so that I can see what they have as I walk by. Whereas with one of these new horror shows, I have to look through glass to see what they are selling. All of that contributes to me seeing less, and making it less likely that I will wander into a store I wasn't intending to go to. What are the benefits of these things, anyway?

Busy

Ack. It is becoming apparent that I am trying to do too many things right now. I'll be back on Monday with my regularly-scheduled weblogging...

Do I Really Need Cable?

I'm getting to the point where I am serious contemplating canceling our cable TV service. It's just getting harder and harder for me to justify the expense of it every month. Our cable bill is wildly out of proportion to the amount of entertainment we get from it.

I've been debating about bailing on the two network shows that I watch anyway. The other two shows that I have been following that I really am excited about are The Sopranos and Battlestar Galactica. I already watch The Sopranos on DVD, because we don't have HBO. And there is no reason that I couldn't watch Battlestar Galactica the same way.

I used to justify the cable bill with the sports that I watched. But over the past year, I really haven't watched any. The basketball team of the city that I live in is in the finals, and I have yet to see a minute of any of the post-season. I used to be way into the NHL (before they crappified the way overtime was run), but I didn't watch any of that this year, either. I saw about an hour of the Federer vs. Nadal French Open final. And I watch every Formula One race -- but is that really enough?

TV shows have been pissing me off. NBC has been doing weird things with the scheduling of their shows (running them 1 or however minutes over the hour), so I'm glad that they are down in 4th place now. You deserve it, you assholes. And every show is so formulaic or contrived.

Hail Damage

On Friday, the city of Akron, OH received hail that was larger than golf balls. Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera on me.

Another unfortunate fact is that I happened to be there, along with my car, which took a pounding. Below is a picture of the top of the right rear quarter panel, with arrows pointing to two of the large dents that are now in my car:


This car is slowly getting the hell beaten out of it. Literally. Like it's not bad enough that I have been driving it 30k miles/year.

Luckily, the hail storm only lasted for five (very long) minutes. So, there are probably only about 15-20 of those sized dents (plus a ton of really tiny ones). Some of the other cars in the area ended up with broken windshields. So, I'm lucky I was still able to drive it home.

More Remaindered

• On Kottke [kottke.org], I saw a link to a pretty amusing interview [time.com] of the cast of Ocean's Thirteen. Keep in mind that I never saw Ocean's Twelve because I heard it was horrible, and have no intention of seeing Ocean's Thirteen because I don't think it'll be much better. Here's an excerpt:

  DAMON: Yeah, I did. I had to go deep to find Linus.
  BARKIN: Was that your character's name?
  DAMON: Yeah.
  BARKIN: I'm sorry, I only read my lines.
  CLOONEY: We like that Matt's done three different Linuses in three different movies.
  DAMON: I have done him kind of different each time.
  BARKIN: It's important for him to change it up, while Brad and George have no range, so they just have to keep playing the same parts.

• On Derek Powazek's weblog [powezek.com], I saw a link to Sanctuary [sanctuaryforall.com], which is a new sci-fi series produced by, and starring, Stargate SG-1's Amanda Tapping. It is being distributed only over the internet, and episodes so far have been $1.99. The first half of the trailer looks really inspiring, which is why I have been debating about trying out an episode. Unfortunately, the second half of the trailer is kind of lame, and really makes me wonder...


• A friend (gmn) recently emailed me a link to this movie [glumbert.com], which shows a bunch of wind-powered kinetic sculptures that are really mesmerizing to watch. Some of the sculptures have legs and actually walk -- using wind power. Amazing bit of engineering.

Relationship Diagrams

A little while ago, I saw a link to this diagram [flickr.com] on Gulfstream [beebo.org]. The diagram shows the relationship between the guests at the author's wedding, and some of them are really amusing.

For instance, between Cindi and Brud, the connection reads "got shat on while on her first date to the zoo with". And between Rees and Mick, the connection reads "once in a Chinese restaurant in Suva, Fiji, three chairs get broken, one after another by".

If I had created one of those for our wedding, we probably could have created one almost as amusing. For instance, two of our friends are siblings (who both happen to read this weblog). We could have created a connection between those two that reads, "JD, who NO ONE believes (because they are so dissimilar) is the sister of BD".

Another connection would have read, "RQ, claimed his shoes caused the Three Mile Island Accident in a story told to BR".

Another would have read, "BL, who proposed in line for tickets at the opening night of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by saying 'Here' while handing over a ring to JK".

Gift Records

One of the weird things that I do is keep records of all of the gifts that I give to other people. I don't think that I know anyone else who does this (or at least, no one else has admitted it to me). It seems really nerdy, and something that only a person who was obsessive-compulsive about record-keeping would do. I'm not sure if I fit into that category or not.

Anyway, there are a number of reasons that I do this. With some friends, we have gotten into the habit of only exchanging birthday cards. With other friends, it is birthday phone calls. I can't always keep track of who I do what with.

Then there are other situations where I don't want to seem as though I am favoritizing anyone. For instance, if I give a relative a graduation gift, and then their sibling graduates a few years later, I would like to give them a comparable amount. Except that I pretty much forget what I gave people the minute after I give it to them.

So, I write it down. I suppose that the answer to all of my problems would be to standardize the gifts that I give. Whenever someone graduates, I give them $X. Whenever someone gets married, I give them $Y. Whenever someone has a birthday, I do Z. That would be way less nerdy. But at the same time, I feel like I own the nerdiness right now, and definitely don't want to give that up.

Windows Vista Content Protection

I'm a little behind the curve on Windows Vista, because I have no intention of installing it on any of my computers in the near future. Recently, I saw a link to this article [auckland.ac.nz], which goes into detail about how the content protection schemes in Vista work, and how they will affect users. Undoubtedly, many of you readers have already seen similar articles. What sets this article apart is the level of detail and how comprehensive it is. Having no experience with Vista and not being a software developer, I'm not sure that I have the best background to evaluate whether the author is being needlessly alarmist, though...

This paragraph should give you the gist of the article:

"Vista's content protection mechanism only allows protected content to be sent over interfaces that also have content-protection facilities built in. Currently the most common high-end audio output interface is S/PDIF (Sony/Philips Digital Interface Format)... Since S/PDIF doesn't provide any content protection, Vista requires that it be disabled when playing protected content..."

Here's how Microsoft will enforce hardware manufacturers playing ball with their schemes:

"Once a weakness is found in a particular driver or device, that driver will have its signature revoked by Microsoft, which means that it will no longer be fed anything considered to be premium content. What this means is that a report of a compromise of a particular driver or device will cause all premium content-handling ability for that device worldwide to be turned off until a fix can be found. "

Cremation Services

Last week, I saw an article about a variety of cremation services [mercurynews.com] that have popped up to scatter ashes. It was of interest to me because I have specified that I would like to be cremated and have my ashes scattered in my will.

The idea of my body taking up a plot of land after I die is appalling to me. What a total waste of land. Not to mention, the waste of marble for the headstone. The thought of my ashes being put in an urn and sitting in someone's house is even more appalling to me, though.

Anyway, check out the statistics that are cited in that article: "...32 percent of U.S. deaths led to cremation in 2005..." A third of Americans are getting cremated? I had no idea it was that high. I have been to a number of funerals in the past 5 years, and I don't think that ANY of those people were cremated. Actually, when the subject comes up (you know how death and funerals just crop up in light chit-chat...) people usually look at me really weird when they find out that I want to be cremated.

It appears that there are a number of services that are available to take someone's ashes and scatter them in exotic places. That actually sounds pretty appealing, because I would hate to specify in my will that I would like to be scattered somewhere in particular, and then burden one of my relatives with the task of taking time off from work to fly halfway around the world to scatter my ashes in some godforsaken corner of the globe. ("I swear that son-of-a-bitch Terence threw a dart at a map when he selected where he wanted his ashes spread, just to continue being the pain in the ass in death that he was in life...")