| almost internet famous |
[Nov. 24th, 2009|11:07 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | origami | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  tired | ] |
A few years ago I downloaded a couple of videos of Vincent Floderer's origami from a web site associated with a now-defunct origami convention. A few years later, the web site hosting the videos disappeared. Because I didn't want the information to be lost, I uploaded the videos to youtube so that other people might find them of interest.
This morning a coworker emailed me because she thought I might be interested to know about an origami video that was linked to by makezine, who had found it through boingboing. She didn't realize at the time that it was, in fact, a video that I had uploaded to youtube.
As a result, the linked video got about 10,000 views yesterday, which is about 30% of the total views it has received in the two and a half years since I uploaded it. While I'm glad people are seeing and enjoying it, I am a bit frustrated by the comments on both linking sites that basically say that Floderer's work isn't origami simply because of the arbitrary rules and meaning they have in their heads about what origami means.
In the boingboing comments, oschene and Floderer himself both do a good job of trying to explain that there is no reason to dismiss the work as anything other than origami, but I think some people can be a little thick headed about changing their opinions. I guess it's like any other time when you discover that something that you have "learned" is incorrect or incomplete. It's not always easy to assimilate new information.
oschene has gone on to post his feelings about the issue on his site. I think it's an uphill battle that is probably somewhat lost, but progress is made by lots of little changes and we all have to do our part. |
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| Between the Folds |
[Nov. 15th, 2009|11:11 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | origami | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | tired | ] |
The showing of Between the Folds today went very well. It was nice to see the documentary again, and the turnout was good. There were probably around 40 people at the reception, and I had some of my more-impressive-works-that-I-happened-to-have-on-hand on display.
I taught about 10 people the jumping frog and the crane in the scant half an hour of reception before the screening, and that went quite well, partly thanks to Joelle's help.
There were probably around 100 people who sat for the screening and most of them stayed for the panel after. I wish that had been a bit longer too, but the library opens at 2 and closes at 5 on Sunday, so they have to operate within those constraints. The questions and comments people had were interesting and it was fun to talk about something on which I am the local expert.
We also got 17 people signed up who expressed an interest in joining our origami club meetings. Since we only have three regulars now, even if only a few actually follow through it will be a big expansion.
So, all in all it was a great success. I hope the other showings around the country are met with as much interest and enthusiasm. I really need to pick up a copy of the DVD now. |
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| Ubuntu 9.10 |
[Nov. 1st, 2009|11:15 am] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | tired | ] |
I did the upgrade last night and it just completed... my laptop is still working so far... the download took a long time, I wasn't able to get full download speed...
Now I need to figure out of anything is broken. |
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| android development |
[Oct. 31st, 2009|11:38 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | tired | ] |
2 big disappointments so far.
1. Dates don't seem to be treated like first-class data types. This is a pain when planning to do a lot of date based calculations and operations.
2. sqlite. I just can't drink the flavor aid, here. Sure, I respect the idea that strict data typing in the database is exposing implementation details, but they are implementation details that I find useful sometimes. And maybe I'm just missing something somewhere, but I had to write this to get the number of weeks between two dates:
rtrim(rtrim(round((julianday('now') - julianday(mydate))/7), '0'), '.')
Even though mydate is stored as a date type column, I have to tell it to convert to julian days to do calculations (and that doesn't get into the hours I spent today figuring out that because I wasn't padding my day and month values with leading zeros, they weren't coming back out as dates that I could parse, but I digress.
The round was to try to get the integer value (I wanted truncate, but I couldn't find a native function for that). That worked great until I concatenated that with a string in the query, at which point it added ".0" to the end of all my numbers. That brings me to the two rtrims, to get rid of ".0" but not "0.0".
I mean, maybe I'm just going about things the wrong way. I am new to java, sqlite, and android development, so there is a good chance that I'm just not using the right functions (man with a hammer and all that), but that brings up another irritation. While there is decent documentation for the android platform, the sqlite documentation has been lacking. Basically, at best, it enumerates the functions but leaves a lot of the usage details to the imagination. Not fun when the only sqlite database you're using is running in an emulator that you haven't set up direct access to yet... I guess it would help if I set up sqlite on my machine for syntax testing or if I set up remote access to the database in the emulator... but again, I digress.
Anyway, it's interesting. I find trying to muddle my way through learning the simple stuff in a new language and environment a little frustrating, but I guess there is no avoiding that. So far I have done a few of the google tutorials, which were helpful, and now I'm working on implementing a simple version of an application for blessed_lunatic. It's going well, even if it's a little bit stop-and-go for some bits. Things that I think should be easy, like formatting a date, have been a little time consuming. |
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| (an)droid on verizon, why it gives me hope |
[Oct. 29th, 2009|07:14 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  exhausted | ] |
So, blessed_lunatic and I have been discussing cell phones and cell phone plans, which is timed nicely for the release of the droid phone. I just wanted to say that I think it's a big leap for verizon to have an android based phone since, historically, verizon has locked down the mobile phones they sell.
In the past, they have gone so far as to write their own firmware for otherwise standard phones (moto razr, for example) to not only control the look and feel, but to restrict the functionality (like disabling bluetooth object transfers to force people to buy music and ringtones, etc.)
However, they can't do that with android based phones. Sure, they can have specific apps not be available in their app store, but the underlying OS can be replaced or modified which means that they are choosing to be more open.
It also gave me a little thrill when, during The Simpsons, I saw the droiddoes ad that says, "iDon't support open development". |
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| seriously? |
[Oct. 29th, 2009|07:05 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | exhausted | ] |
So, I was sick last week, but I was on antibiotics. I was mostly feeling better this week, but throughout yesterday I started feeling like my lungs were getting filled up with stuff. It started out subtle, but it got worse throughout the day... by the time I was trying to go to sleep, I couldn't. I've been having trouble sleeping this week, which is unusual.
Anyway, I woke up at least once every hour all night. I got up and tried to do something to help at 3 and 4, but... to no avail. By this morning I was feeling horrible, so I went to a walk-in clinic (my doctor's office didn't have any slots available). Since we were walk-in, it took forever to be seen, and then the service was slow. They tested me for flu (negative) and for strep (which was also done last week, also negative). They agreed that it sounds like I have diminished lung function... and a 102 temp.
I ended up getting a new antibiotic, two shots, a breathing treatment thing (vapor), bloodwork, and I got sent off for an xray. Basically it looks like I may have pneumonia again. Hopefully it won't take me too long to recover. I'm feeling slightly better, but I think that's due to the steroid shot. They said if I don't feel better tomorrow that I should come back.
This pretty much puts the kibosh on the various Halloween plans I had. Bleh. |
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| bleh |
[Oct. 24th, 2009|06:16 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  sick | ] |
Thursday I had a bit of a sore throat. Friday it was much, much worse. I went to the clinic and they said the quick strep test was negative but that I probably still had strep. They gave me some antibiotics and a steroid so I could feel well enough to teach origami at Gallacon today.
That went well, although they had decided to cut it down to a single hour of origami instead of two one hours sessions. Just as well.
Unfortunately for next year's MTAC, Tennessee Game Days is the same weekend as MTAC, so I probably won't be teaching origami at MTAC, given the reception the idea has gotten from the new programming director already.
In other news, if you have any interest in World of Goo and you don't already have it, I would recommend picking up a copy this weekend. They are running a pay-what-you-want special. It's a good little puzzle game and they have versions for Windows, Linux, and Mac.
blessed_lunatic has been thinking about new phones lately, since her battery won't hold a charge. The current situation is to wait until our contract runs out in the middle of next year and reevaluate our options from scratch, or just stay with Verizon (I hate Verizon) and let them subsidize a new phone early next year in exchange for a new two year contract.
One of my problems with Verizon is that their data plan is overpriced and is per-phone. I'm not willing to play $60/month extra just to have internet access on two phones. That's more than DSL! What a ripoff.
Anyway, I'm looking forward to seeing more information about the droid phone, since it looks fairly interesting. I have to wonder if Verizon is turning over a new leaf in terms of phone openness or if they will try to hamstring the Android OS to keep people in check. I like the add I saw, knocking on what the iPhone doesn't do that droid will do. "iDon't allow open development" was particularly interesting to see on mainstream TV (The Simpsons).
All that said, I still really like my current Palm Centro. Sadly, it's the Last True Palm OS phone ever to be made. That makes me sad in a way, given how many nice programs were available for it. I estimate that it still has more software released for it than the "There's an app for that" iPhone.
I've been meaning to do a one year retrospective on my phone. I'm still very happy with it, even without internet access. I do wish it had wifi, but I can live without that. My most used apps are probably Keyring (password manager) and pFuel (miles per gallon tracker [my average for the last 16,885 miles is 36.92mpg]).
I also use profiles to manager how my phone rings automatically every day. That's one of my favorite under-the-radar apps that I would be sad to go without. (I hate it when someone's phone rings all the time at work and they aren't there to answer it... I don't want to be that guy.)
I also recently started to use TreoLauncher as my app manager and it works quite nicely and it let me add a "Don't Panic" background.
As far as the hardware goes, it has weathered quite well. There are a few places where the paint has scraped off, but on the whole it looks about like new. Thats' much better than can be said for blessed_lunatic's env2, which has the chrome peeling like mad, driving her nuts.
My battery also holds a charge for several days (I don't talk much), which is much better than blessed_lunatic's (we got the phones at the same time). In fact, we just ordered a replacement battery for her phone since it had become totally unreliable. The only battery trouble I can recall having was when I was in Canada, but I think that had to do with the fact that I was roaming so it was trying really hard to find a non-roaming tower, to no avail. |
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| Jaunty upgrade notes |
[Oct. 16th, 2009|12:10 am] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | tired | ] |
BackInTime works well, although I wish I could control when it archives things (daily is always at midnight, and my laptop isn't always on at midnight.
The FlashBlock FireFox plugin works now (before it just prevented flash from appearing at all).
VNC on my desktop did stop working correctly after the upgrade. Basically the mouse and keyboard inputs were being sent, but the screen would not update after initially connecting. I eventually found a thread that offered the workaround of running "metacity --replace", which fixed the problem to my satisfaction.
Restoring from suspend/sleep seems to be quite a bit faster on my laptop now. |
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| Gallacon: Animanga Festival |
[Oct. 13th, 2009|06:02 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | tired | ] |
Later this month, the Nashville Public Library is hosting Gallacon: Animanga Festival, basically a small anime and manga festival for teens in the Nashville area. I'm teaching origami as part of it on Saturday, October 24th. (Check out thanks at the end of the link...) |
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| ...and nobody had to get nailed to anything. |
[Oct. 11th, 2009|07:05 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | tired | ] |
At the end of last week I tried to use the program Back In Time to set up incremental backups. I had been using FlyBack, but it was buggy and no longer being developed.
So, I added a repository to my apt sources on my laptop and installed it. No problems.
Running it, however, was a different story. Since I was using Ubuntu 8.04LTS, I only had rsync 2.x and Back In Time uses a parameter that was added in rsync 3.x. I saw in the bug report that the back port for Ubuntu 8.04 included that version, so I added that and it worked.
But, that made me start thinking about what I might gain from upgrading the version of Ubuntu on my laptop (and maybe eventually my desktop). My target was 9.04, but that's not a direct upgrade from 8.04, I had to upgrade to 8.10 first.
Keep in mind that this isn't really a necessary upgrade. Aside from a few features that might be nice to have (file manager tabs, for example), and some that are neat but unnecessary for me (guest sessions), I don't have a compelling reason to upgrade aside from "fixing" something that isn't broken.
So, I enabled the upgrade on Friday night and started it. As it turned out I needed to free up some space first, so I did that and I tried again. It took a long time to download and update, about 20 hours. After the upgrade, things were mostly working fine, but that only got me to 8.10, so I started the upgrade to 9.04 last night. Another 20 hours or so later, I have a working, upgraded system. Huzzah!
A few things do work better, but I am missing one or two programs I used to have. However, my WIFI LED now lights up and blinks. I'm not really clear on why it stopped doing that a year or so ago, but now it's working again... that's good, right? |
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| Oktoberfest* |
[Oct. 2nd, 2009|06:46 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | tired | ] |
Today was our annual Oktoberfest*. I selected Frisbee Golf and Ladder Golf as the least... intense sports to participate in. That's somewhat ironic since I don't like actual golf.
My partner ended up as the Ladder Golf champions for the year, winning most of our games by a wide margin. I'm not really sure how we managed to do that. I did have a few minor issues with the rules (or lack of them), but I think it was generally fair.
I didn't do so well at Frisbee Golf. I think I was maybe in the top 7 or 8 out of 20. It was a really tough course because it was very windy. Some people got a 9 on the second hole just due to the wind and the parking lot, it was very unforgiving.
*No beer; no German Food. |
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| Oh, video game notes. |
[Sep. 26th, 2009|07:15 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | exhausted | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Stevie Wonder - Superstition | ] |
I picked up a copy of The World Ends with You and Scribblenauts before my trip, to have some new distractions. I am enjoying them both. Scribblenauts is of particular interest due to the emergent aspects of the gameplay, although it's hard to play when you're really tired because it does require some level of creativity. |
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| Sunny Victoria, BC |
[Sep. 26th, 2009|07:08 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | exhausted | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | KT Tunstall - Hold On | ] |
This morning I got back from a week of working in Victoria, BC, Canada.
It was a good and productive trip with only a few drawbacks. The weather was really nice. Sunny and warm, but not hot, every day with no rain. Apparently they usually have more rain this time of year, but people said that the entire summer had been really nice.
I got to meet my counterparts and talk to my boss a bit more, which is good. I also participated in three days of meetings with various representatives from other parts of the organization and I found it educational.
Victoria was also nice in a more general sense. It's fairly liberal/hippie, so there are a lot of vegetarian options at restaurants and things are mostly labeled. It was also not only mild, but the mountains and trees reminded me of the area I grew up (although more evergreen). Most of the area does not have mosquitoes, so they leave the doors and windows open without screens, which is weird.
Now the downsides... Since the meetings were all-day every-day for three days, including large group dinners for four days running, I found it fairly exhausting personally. I guess there isn't much to do about that, it's just challenging for me.
Also, since time was precious, I didn't have an opportunity to do much of personal interest. Most of the places I wanted to visit closed at 5 or 6, and I usually didn't get done with the group dinner until 8 at the earliest (and the meetings started at 8am, so they were pretty much 12 hour days).
In the main drag in Victoria there is a store called Interactivity: Games and Stuff that would have been neat to visit. I had heard that they carried board games and I did get to window shop for a minute. They had a nice selection and they also sell Dube juggling equipment and a bunch of other neat stuff. Plus, they had about half a dozen origami models in various parts of the window display. Adding insult to injury, when I was looking I noticed that the store next door is called The Papery and I could see that they stock what appeared to be a decent selection of handmade paper. Alas, they also closed too early.
The Victoria Bug Zoo also had unfortunate hours, and I didn't manage to get to The Butchart Gardens either, since the late Sept. hours move closing time from 9pm to 5:30pm.
I did, however, get to take a few nice walks near the shore at night, and one group walk along the breakwater during the afternoon. I have some pictures that I need to get off the camera, clean up, and upload.
Probably the worst thing of the whole trip, though, was the return flight. Basically it was an 11 hour redeye that had us leaving at 8pm and getting home at 9:30am, so today I'm totally exhausted and miserable. |
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