Sunday, September 30, 2007

Day of the Sun

Not much sun out to enjoy its day, but it's bright enough to make me sneeze. Why is 3 my maximum number of sneezes? I don't know if I've ever sneezed more than thrice consecutively. Lot's of musicians in the park. A jazz band, a honky-tonk swing duet, some acoustic guitars. Those are just the ones I saw. What if you sneezed while playing a clarinet? I played the clarinet in fifth and sixth grade but I never sneezed while playing. If I had I don't think anyone would have noticed. I wasn't very good. I remember my favorite song to play in 6th grade band was Jupiter from The Planets by Holst. It manage to be simultaneously extremely beautiful and extremely easy to play. Perfect for sixth graders. Well, that's about all. Happy day, Sun.

P.S.
NYU uses iMacs at all of its computer kiosks. Why they don't replace Safari with Firefox is beyond me. Half of Web 2.0 doesn't work in Safari. NYU, fix this!

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Today

Today I helps an old woman cross the street and then I sat in the park in the sun and read The Old Man and The Sea.

I've been playing a lot of Team Fortress 2. What do you expect?

A while ago I re-discovered a great video of Christopher Hitchens. I highly recommend you watch it. Following that, I spent about two days consuming all the Hichens YouTube has to offer. I had meant to post about it at the time but I forgot.

Sunday, September 23, 2007

Why CD Sales Are Sagging Like My Grandma's Tits

The last CD I "bought" bought was Hot Fuss by The Killers back whenever that came out. Right now I'm working on code that retrieves metadata for CDs (as when you pop in a CD and iTunes knows the album, artist, and track names automatically) and I need a CD with which to test. I don't actually have any CDs with me at school. Who would? Anyway, I go to Virgin to get one. I got the Spring Awakening soundtrack. Do you know how much it cost? $20.58. Do you know how much it costs on iTunes? $9.99. And that is why...

CD Sales Are Sagging Like My Grandma's Tits!

Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Guess What

Love is the most wonderful thing in the world.

Monday, September 17, 2007

Faiya

I had some nasty shits today and I don't mind telling ya, my chilihole is on faiya!

Mundane with a silent 'n'

  • Yesterday was the first day that tasted like fall.

  • I'm in a new building this semester which means I have a new running path. It is my favorite so far. The scenery is all very nice and the sidewalks are much wider.

  • Classes are going fine.

  • I'm doing a new comp-sci project which is loads of fun - writting a fully managed MusicBrainz client library. It's related to and will be used in my SoC project.

They're putting up a Toys 'R Us where Tower Records used to be. Gag me with a cock.

Friday, September 07, 2007

Frai Dei

  • Getting to bed as late (aka early) as I did last night, I woke very late today.
  • Wasn't up to much.
  • Coding,
  • eating,
  • reading,
  • watching,
  • other ing-ending words.
I just bought, and am loving, Ta-Dah by Scissor Sisters. I can't imagine many excuses for your not having this album.

Day of the Thurs

What are Thurs, and why have they got their own day? I want a Thur. Get me one for my birthday, OK? Get my two, and then my birthday can be a Thursday.

  • I was sadsad because I didn't think I was getting breakfast,
  • But then I was haphappy because I did get breakfast.
  • There was stuff and things and um...
  • Right, then I had a hamburger with Claire and we talked about drug legalization and our careers.
  • My 5pm nap got a little out of hand.
  • I barely got the gym in time.
  • I had dinner.
  • Now it's 3 am and I'm not tired because of the monster nap. Good thing no class on Friday.
We hold these penises to be self-evident.

Thursday, September 06, 2007

Shirtses

A few months back, a good chunk of my laundry was stolen. I am no stranger to re-wearing cloths, but if I'm to start this school year off on the right foot, I suppose I had better have at least a modest selection of wardrobe. Or so I told myself when I ordered $70 worth of T-Shirts from threadless.com. Hey, they were having a back-to-school special. Anyhoo, the UPS package came today and I am overjoyed. Here, you can judge my taste in T-Shirts:

And here are some closeups with the titles:

A lot of unicorns. I don't know why that is.

UPDATE: These shirts are too small. Damnit!

Tuesday, September 04, 2007

Thoughts

The human intellect has lately been on my mind (pardon the recursion) and I'd like to share my thoughts.

Most of us isn't anything to write home about. We can see, but just a little bit of the spectrum. We can kind of hear, though not nearly as well as a lot of other mammals. And I believe we have a sense of smell, but, as I understand it, only on a technicality. Thinking is where it's at for us. Now don't get me wrong: I think we think great. Clearly it's gotten us places and I'm certainly not knocking human intellect. But it does seem to me we're too proud by half of our minds.

Intelligence was seen for many eons as our divine ingredient. While most educated people today don't believe that the all-powerful and perfect Creator Of the Universe has an appendix or a pair of thumbs, many still fancy that His mind was the image after which ours were created. Recently, Deism, mumbo jumbo, and certain interpretations of Spinoza have supposed an "Intelligence" to the "Universe" which, we are meant to believe, is of a like kind to our own (though infinitely greater in size and power). More recently still, science fiction writes of man-like intelligences belonging to gods, universes, and the beasts of alien worlds. It is generally our way in religion, mumbo jumbo, and fiction to paint "intelligence" as a Platonic Form apart from the rest of human anatomy. It is the perfect and only means of Really Getting Shit Done and it's available to worthy Gods, aliens, machines and men.

I've been thinking that's rather not the case at all. I've been thinking our intelligence is rather just as novel and particular as anything else about us. Thumbs, for example. Thumbs suit us fine, but they are by no means the pinnacle of grasping engineering. We have prehensile thumbs because, aside from other reasons, we started to walk on our feet and this allowed the lateral digit to drift proximally. The thumb is both novel in that it is not a priori an obvious thing to have, and it is particular in that it is entirely a function of our evolution. "Thumbs" are no great or ideal means of pinching. We would not expect to find them on an extraterrestrial or a universal creator, or indeed The Universe itself.

I submit that the mammalian intellect is both novel and particular in the same ways as the thumb. There is nothing obvious about the way our intellects are, and they are not the best design for the problem. To be clear, I am not referring only to the details of our minds, such as our capacities of memory or the way in which we process vision or the methods by which people go about reasoning. I mean all of our most fundamental functions - consciousness, memory, self-awareness, cognition, imagination, all of it - are just as novel and particular as the rest of us. Should we meet things from other worlds, we would be as likely to discover anything we would call an "intelligence" as we would be to discover anything remotely like a "thumb," or "appendix," or "prefrontal neocortex." This is not to say that these other beings would not be very complex and possibly capable of feats far in advance of our own. Space travel, time travel, anything you care to speculate. All achieved with systems wholly unlike the mammalian intellect.

I am personally of the opinion that we will meet many such strange systems, and sooner rather than later. Not in the stars of course. We will create them ourselves in silicon. Or our silicon children will create them for us. We might never know what "thought" is like for those machines, if they even experience any such sensation. But they will surpass all human benchmarks of acumen. They will be smarter than all of us put together. If it's fare to call them "smart," then they will be the smartest things ever. I am quite sure.

You know, you should really read Jeff Hawkins' book, On Intelligence.

Monday, September 03, 2007

If music be the food of love, then I ought to be fat

As you may know, I've been working this summer to bring a Linux music application to Windows. Things are almost done and you, dear reader, will have the express pleasure of trying it yourself very soon. Consider it a Karmatic reward for your suffering under Windows.

Things going so well as they are, I'm powerful excited and thinking a treat is in order. I've awarded myself a little music from iTunes:

Classics by Ratatat. For those who are into esoteric techno/instrumental. Check out Lex.

La Donna by the East Village Opera Company. A blend of opera, rock, metal, funk, techno, salsa, and awesomeness. Straight up my ally. I have long enjoyed their self-titled album and I highly recommend you get the first track from that (Overture Redux). From La Donna, I recommend La Danza for starters, especially if you sang Italian arias in high school ;)

Saturday, September 01, 2007

Epiphany II

Predecessor = Predeceaser

Dinner Encounters

Unfortunately I have no penchant for cooking. My culinary gifts include heating to 345 degrees, inserting the pizza, and not much else. Left to my own devices, I would surely die of the scurvy in under a week. As such, I am outfitted this semester with a dining hall meal plan. Despite my advanced age, I sit my ass down in the cafeteria next to the Freshman and I enjoy the finest cuisines a minimum wage university staff can muster.

Freshman are very alacritous. I remember my first days in the campus dining facilities: I'd sit down and eat with anybody. It's easy to strike up a conversation when you don't know anybody (and when nobody knows you). The first month of school is like some bizarre twilight zone where it's socially acceptable to just start talking to any old person. It doesn't matter if they're ugly or boring or a Strasburg Method actor; they're your new friend. Then by the second or third month you've made real friends and acquaintances and there's no longer a need to bother with regular people.

So anyway, the other day I'm eating dinner alone at Paladium when this person walk right up and asks if he can join me. It took me just a minute to figure out what was going on. Did I know him? God I'm bad with faces. Um, no I don't think I know him, he's just this... person. This... and then it dawns on me. This... Freshman. And this is the first week, yes, and he's new to the city, right, and he's just looking to get to know me. OK, I say, pull up a chair. I then proceeded to have dinner with four Freshman. They were all very nice and, with the exception of the one from the city, very insecure. When I realized I was eating and talking with people who are my sister's age, it made me feel terribly old.

When the youngin first sat down, he asked if I was a first year too. I told him no, and he immediately came back with I knew it. He asked what year I was and I said Senior. Right, he said, that's just what he thought. I guess that means I'm giving off a craggly old man fucking aura. They were nice pups. So is my sister. She's going to do great at this.

And a happy first of September to you mister Wilkes Booth.