I don't tend to give movie or concert reviews, but you should go see 'The Departed.' It has it's dramatic moments, yes. However, despite all the wonderful tension, it was also wicked funny. Blue Velvet funny. Or maybe it's just funny to the locals; I'm not really sure.
The engineers among you may note that the infamous "microchips" used to put a nuclear warhead up a camel's ass from 100 miles away were some generic ST Microelectronic components, as such. Choice! Does that count as product placement? I admit it. I laughed when they flashed the case full of "goods." The Chinese were paying millions of dollars for ICs that weren't properly baked, sealed or packaged in any form of ESD protection. But my mirth concealed my utter shame.
Besides, everyone knows the best microcontroller to use in your nuclear warhead is the DS5000 from Dallas Semiconductor.
Like, no kidding. Thousands upon thousands of nuclear warheads are/were controlled by something that runs BASIC. The DS5000's claim to fame is that it purports to be a secure microcontroller. There's a cipher between code and code execution; you're not supposed to be able to tell what instructions the part is executing. Why bother, you ask? Because a guy can tell a lot about a system from it's EMR, so the goal is to obscure the executed instructions from the program. In theory. That sort of tamper-proof security never really works in practice, though. The DS5000 can be (and has repeatedly been) cracked. It's not just a story that S. Burns tells to his 6.121 students.
I know I feel more secure already.
Saturday, October 28, 2006
Thursday, October 26, 2006
Solved Mysteries
Q. What are the symptomatic differences between a hangover and natural gas toxicity?
A. Surprisingly few.
Technically, natural gas isn't toxic. Oxygen deprivation, however, totally is. Symptoms of hypoxia include: dizziness; fatigue; nausea and headache. Last Saturday, I went out and had something like 3-4 beers and felt pretty terrible on Sunday. Unusual, but not unheard of since I dropped to a size 4/6. My skin was tingly in that weird uncomfortable way that sometimes happens when you're dehydrated. I had a headache. Everything smelled off... it was your typical mild hangover. Anything else out of the ordinary, I attributed to angst, because everybody knows that my pasty, translucent skin encompasses a resevoir of resentment sufficient to propell a G0th-o-Rock3t of Despair from here to the galactic core.
It was cold out, so I was keeping the windows closed.
But it so happens that on Friday or Saturday, the pilot light on our oven went out. Which is why, when U. and I went to keep the pancakes and bacon warm on Saturday morning, the oven wasn't heating up. Over the course of the weekend our apartment was filling up with gas. And when my roommate came home on Sunday night, the concentration of natural gas in our apartment was apparently overwhelming. I'd spent all day inside, trying to clean, and had only left all of an hour or so before she got in. Probably just in time.
Mystery, solved!
I felt much better when I left on Sunday night, but was still cracked out enough that the Scissor Sisters concert was less than awesome. Small Sins was a lot of fun, though; particularly when the crazy guy in the middle started whaling on his synth with a maraca. They claim an affinity to Kraftwerk, so I'm going to see if Mark can tolerate any of their stuff. In the meantime...
Monday, October 23, 2006
Time
I keep telling myself this. All things in the fullness of time.
And what comes of it, comes of it.
I'm getting a little sick of C.S. Lewis. I was reading through his science-fiction trilogy, 'Out of the Silent Planet', 'Perelandra', and 'That Hiddeous Strength.' But it got to be a bit much when the sacrifice of Ransom was equated to the passion of the Christ, when Destiny and the free will of Man to walk with God were made equivalent, and when the figure of the King was introduced to be basically omnipotent, omnibenevolent and all-accepting of the will of Maledil, that the death of races is truly only the beginning of creation.
I see what he's getting at, but was disappointed. I think it's better for an author to make his own arguments than to render his discussion and end point ambiguous by grafting it onto something as complex and infinitely re-interpretable as the Bible. He had already made it abudantly clear that the Lady was an analog of Eve, and that the whole point of Ransom's journey to Perelandra was to influence whether or not there was a second Fall. But rather than carving out his own interpretation of the causes and consequences of our flawed humanity, he dove straight into the depths of the Bible (to the point where I had to start looking up specific Biblical references to try to understand what he was getting at). Out of nowhere! All by introducing Evil as a direct, anthropormorphic entity who talked endlessly and had a penchant for disembowelling local fauna.
I still have the third book left, along with my copy of 'The Screwtape Letters,' but at this point, it's tempting to go off on a tangent and research the Children's Illustrated version of 'Thus Sprach Zarathustra,' instead. Nietzsche! You know, for kids! I'll admit, it's not originally my idea, and that it's not the most useful of exercises given how prone I am to falling into the trap of Existentialism. But just think about how awesome a children's illustrated primer to 'Zarathustra' would be. Imagine a toddler, sitting quiet in a chair with this book in his lap, not moving. He looks up at his mother, who has just walked into the room, and timidly asks, "Mother? What is touch?"
And what comes of it, comes of it.
I'm getting a little sick of C.S. Lewis. I was reading through his science-fiction trilogy, 'Out of the Silent Planet', 'Perelandra', and 'That Hiddeous Strength.' But it got to be a bit much when the sacrifice of Ransom was equated to the passion of the Christ, when Destiny and the free will of Man to walk with God were made equivalent, and when the figure of the King was introduced to be basically omnipotent, omnibenevolent and all-accepting of the will of Maledil, that the death of races is truly only the beginning of creation.
I see what he's getting at, but was disappointed. I think it's better for an author to make his own arguments than to render his discussion and end point ambiguous by grafting it onto something as complex and infinitely re-interpretable as the Bible. He had already made it abudantly clear that the Lady was an analog of Eve, and that the whole point of Ransom's journey to Perelandra was to influence whether or not there was a second Fall. But rather than carving out his own interpretation of the causes and consequences of our flawed humanity, he dove straight into the depths of the Bible (to the point where I had to start looking up specific Biblical references to try to understand what he was getting at). Out of nowhere! All by introducing Evil as a direct, anthropormorphic entity who talked endlessly and had a penchant for disembowelling local fauna.
I still have the third book left, along with my copy of 'The Screwtape Letters,' but at this point, it's tempting to go off on a tangent and research the Children's Illustrated version of 'Thus Sprach Zarathustra,' instead. Nietzsche! You know, for kids! I'll admit, it's not originally my idea, and that it's not the most useful of exercises given how prone I am to falling into the trap of Existentialism. But just think about how awesome a children's illustrated primer to 'Zarathustra' would be. Imagine a toddler, sitting quiet in a chair with this book in his lap, not moving. He looks up at his mother, who has just walked into the room, and timidly asks, "Mother? What is touch?"
Wednesday, October 18, 2006
Pearls of Wisdom
I have 10 minutes to kill. So, here are some pearls of wisdom from last night's Infosession.
1. The Designer is the person who conceives and gives birth to a chip, taping out and sending it off to Manufacturing.
2. Once first silicon comes back, the chip then becomes the responsibility of the Product and Test Engineers, who raise it and send it off to college.
3. When the chip finally gets to University, the Applications Engineer shows it around and writes its MySpace profile.
The PT/E speaker is the one who started this deadly train of analogy. I couldn't help but take it to its inevitable, and highly unfortunate, conclusion.
1. The Designer is the person who conceives and gives birth to a chip, taping out and sending it off to Manufacturing.
2. Once first silicon comes back, the chip then becomes the responsibility of the Product and Test Engineers, who raise it and send it off to college.
3. When the chip finally gets to University, the Applications Engineer shows it around and writes its MySpace profile.
The PT/E speaker is the one who started this deadly train of analogy. I couldn't help but take it to its inevitable, and highly unfortunate, conclusion.
Sunday, October 15, 2006
Motorcycle Diaries
Today was my first real day out with my motorcycle.
I've wanted to get a bike since my first summer in Vermont. I wanted my Class M more than a year before I earned my Class D. I'd go on rides with Dan and Brian after pick-up games on Saturdays. I talked about motorcycles with Omar. I envied Riad's Ninja, and later, his Ducati. When I was working on my thesis, I promised myself that the first things I would buy after starting work would be a guitar and a motorcycle. It was a promise I could only keep in the fullness of time. I bought a guitar from a good friend on a rainy day in winter. In June, M. and I went and took the Ironstone Ventures MSF course out at Bunker Hill.
I started looking at bikes to buy, and in the fullness of time, I found my Suzuki GS500 on Craigslist. I'm rather inexperienced and nervous when it comes to motorcycles, but I love them so, and now we're off to a good start. My bike is inspected. It runs. It's easy to maintain. It's parked in my back yard. If I don't die riding it, I have an idea of what I'd like to upgrade to. I know the gear I want (some of which is finally on order). I have no idea where to ride, but I do have other friends that ride. I'm good at riding. I enjoy the gyroscopic procession of counter-steering. I like feeling how the engine shifts. I'm looking forward to being technically proficient enough to justify getting a nice piece of equipment some time down the road. Of course, I feel like an ass, like an etiquette-free coat-tail riding poser, whenever I talk to more experienced riders. I think a good part of the riding scene is kind of like highschool, and I'm the girl who got her bike at Salvation Army. But most people seem to ride because they enjoy riding, and not because they're in it for the attention. So, as long as I'm not actively making an ass of myself, I can't really go wrong.
So, this week I finally started putting miles on my bike. I've just been riding around Cambridge and Somerville, at night, when there's not a lot of traffic. I've practiced shifting, mostly. And keeping my eyes up off of the road surface. The clutch is too tight. A friend gave me instructions on adjusting the clutch cable, and the mechanism seems straightforward. It's a week of starts and stops, though. I was riding around on Thursday night when I managed to drop my bike from a dead stop. I'd pulled over to the side of the road in Boston's financial district (a crowned road) and, whups, the bike was on its side and two dudes were running over to help me pick it up. They wouldn't let me pick it up on my own, and the fall broke my brake lever. However, I'm sure I'll drop the bike again, so I'll have more opportunities to practice picking it up, and now I have something to replace.
Today was a week in the planning, and the weather was glorious. L. met me at my place, I spent some time adjusting my mirrors, he ran through the plan and we and fueled up. I discovered that my bike has a safety feature against starting up in 1st with the kickstand down. We took Rt. 2 out to Allston, to the MotoMarket for some highway practice and to look at gear. As is by now traditional, they don't have the pants I want in my size. Last time, Rev'itt wasn't even shipping the make I wanted, so at least my luck is improving. Then it was down Rt. 27 to BikeWorx, which is rumored to be home to the only reputable mechanic in the Greater Boston Area. The good man there listened to my bike idle, pointed out what some of the different noises were, and enlightened me as to how terrible fuel additives are for one's fuel system. It was good to chat with him, and it was relieving to have more of an explanation than, "You don't need to worry about it." I am now comfortable not worrying about the noise my engine makes. L. and I geeked about various other things. I picked up a replacement brake lever, new bar sliders, chain cleaner and some lunch. We then took Rt. 62 through to Rt. 2-A.
Near the junction, L. and I got stuck behind a station wagon for a few blocks. There was a little blond girl, maybe four years old, in the back seat, grinning at us. She waved. I waved back. She giggled. She looked back over the seat. I threw up the horns. And she then proceeded to throw the horns back to us and wave furiously out the car window. I can only imagine what her parents thought.
I laughed so hard I nearly dumped the clutch.
We stayed on 2-A through Lincoln and Lexington. This was neat because I've been driven through those areas, but never really retained much of the local geography. That part of 2-A is also rather pretty, and police-infested. We ignored the signs warning of construction and advising us to seek an alternate route, and ended up having to ride over two sections that had no pavement. Some jerk in the world's ugliest Subaru tailgated us through the second rough patch, which seems bizarre given the road conditions. Eventually, we caught up with two other random motorists (who had taken the detour we had spurned) and sped through all the twisty bits at the end of 2-A, only to hit dead-end traffic on Mystic Valley Rd.
It was dark by the time I got home, so I didn't adjust my clutch cable. Nor did I clean my chain, or install my new brake lever. But my accumulated mileage is now something like 120-150 miles. It's a start.
I've wanted to get a bike since my first summer in Vermont. I wanted my Class M more than a year before I earned my Class D. I'd go on rides with Dan and Brian after pick-up games on Saturdays. I talked about motorcycles with Omar. I envied Riad's Ninja, and later, his Ducati. When I was working on my thesis, I promised myself that the first things I would buy after starting work would be a guitar and a motorcycle. It was a promise I could only keep in the fullness of time. I bought a guitar from a good friend on a rainy day in winter. In June, M. and I went and took the Ironstone Ventures MSF course out at Bunker Hill.
I started looking at bikes to buy, and in the fullness of time, I found my Suzuki GS500 on Craigslist. I'm rather inexperienced and nervous when it comes to motorcycles, but I love them so, and now we're off to a good start. My bike is inspected. It runs. It's easy to maintain. It's parked in my back yard. If I don't die riding it, I have an idea of what I'd like to upgrade to. I know the gear I want (some of which is finally on order). I have no idea where to ride, but I do have other friends that ride. I'm good at riding. I enjoy the gyroscopic procession of counter-steering. I like feeling how the engine shifts. I'm looking forward to being technically proficient enough to justify getting a nice piece of equipment some time down the road. Of course, I feel like an ass, like an etiquette-free coat-tail riding poser, whenever I talk to more experienced riders. I think a good part of the riding scene is kind of like highschool, and I'm the girl who got her bike at Salvation Army. But most people seem to ride because they enjoy riding, and not because they're in it for the attention. So, as long as I'm not actively making an ass of myself, I can't really go wrong.
So, this week I finally started putting miles on my bike. I've just been riding around Cambridge and Somerville, at night, when there's not a lot of traffic. I've practiced shifting, mostly. And keeping my eyes up off of the road surface. The clutch is too tight. A friend gave me instructions on adjusting the clutch cable, and the mechanism seems straightforward. It's a week of starts and stops, though. I was riding around on Thursday night when I managed to drop my bike from a dead stop. I'd pulled over to the side of the road in Boston's financial district (a crowned road) and, whups, the bike was on its side and two dudes were running over to help me pick it up. They wouldn't let me pick it up on my own, and the fall broke my brake lever. However, I'm sure I'll drop the bike again, so I'll have more opportunities to practice picking it up, and now I have something to replace.
Today was a week in the planning, and the weather was glorious. L. met me at my place, I spent some time adjusting my mirrors, he ran through the plan and we and fueled up. I discovered that my bike has a safety feature against starting up in 1st with the kickstand down. We took Rt. 2 out to Allston, to the MotoMarket for some highway practice and to look at gear. As is by now traditional, they don't have the pants I want in my size. Last time, Rev'itt wasn't even shipping the make I wanted, so at least my luck is improving. Then it was down Rt. 27 to BikeWorx, which is rumored to be home to the only reputable mechanic in the Greater Boston Area. The good man there listened to my bike idle, pointed out what some of the different noises were, and enlightened me as to how terrible fuel additives are for one's fuel system. It was good to chat with him, and it was relieving to have more of an explanation than, "You don't need to worry about it." I am now comfortable not worrying about the noise my engine makes. L. and I geeked about various other things. I picked up a replacement brake lever, new bar sliders, chain cleaner and some lunch. We then took Rt. 62 through to Rt. 2-A.
Near the junction, L. and I got stuck behind a station wagon for a few blocks. There was a little blond girl, maybe four years old, in the back seat, grinning at us. She waved. I waved back. She giggled. She looked back over the seat. I threw up the horns. And she then proceeded to throw the horns back to us and wave furiously out the car window. I can only imagine what her parents thought.
I laughed so hard I nearly dumped the clutch.
We stayed on 2-A through Lincoln and Lexington. This was neat because I've been driven through those areas, but never really retained much of the local geography. That part of 2-A is also rather pretty, and police-infested. We ignored the signs warning of construction and advising us to seek an alternate route, and ended up having to ride over two sections that had no pavement. Some jerk in the world's ugliest Subaru tailgated us through the second rough patch, which seems bizarre given the road conditions. Eventually, we caught up with two other random motorists (who had taken the detour we had spurned) and sped through all the twisty bits at the end of 2-A, only to hit dead-end traffic on Mystic Valley Rd.
It was dark by the time I got home, so I didn't adjust my clutch cable. Nor did I clean my chain, or install my new brake lever. But my accumulated mileage is now something like 120-150 miles. It's a start.
Thursday, October 12, 2006
Sightings
There's an overpass by the Fells that seems to be a nexus for social expression, a kind of public signboard. People aren't tagging it with your typical overpass grafiti. It's not the kind you look for on road trips to pass the time (like Burma Shave advertisements). They're personal and sometimes obscure messages, always on the same overpass, always facing the northbound traffic on I-93 just as it starts to wind its way through the Fells. The southbound traffic only gets to see an overpass, two miles further up the road, that's covered in American flags.
When I started my job, the message was a piece of pink posterboard with black hand lettering: "Welcome home, Mark."
Two months ago, it was a message spelled out in white plastic cups, mixed case, pushed into the diamond openings of the overpass link fence: "I [heart] Andrew."
Four weeks ago, it was some gibberish sequence of block letters, with red plastic cups.
This morning it was tempera paint on pieces of colored paper. It looked fragile. What I could catch at 70mph was, "Farewell and thank you, Lance Corporal Eddie Garvin," heavily abbreviated for quick scansion, surmounting the Purple Heart. There was a lot more, but it's going to be lost on me. It's stormed all day, today, so the rest of the proclamation will be beyond recognition by the time I drive into work tomorrow.
EDIT: 9:15am 10/12/2006 Some things are apparently stronger than they look. "Farewell and thank you. Our hero, Lance Corporal Eddie Garvin. Your smile and your humor will be missed. Semper Fi.
When I started my job, the message was a piece of pink posterboard with black hand lettering: "Welcome home, Mark."
Two months ago, it was a message spelled out in white plastic cups, mixed case, pushed into the diamond openings of the overpass link fence: "I [heart] Andrew."
Four weeks ago, it was some gibberish sequence of block letters, with red plastic cups.
This morning it was tempera paint on pieces of colored paper. It looked fragile. What I could catch at 70mph was, "Farewell and thank you, Lance Corporal Eddie Garvin," heavily abbreviated for quick scansion, surmounting the Purple Heart. There was a lot more, but it's going to be lost on me. It's stormed all day, today, so the rest of the proclamation will be beyond recognition by the time I drive into work tomorrow.
EDIT: 9:15am 10/12/2006 Some things are apparently stronger than they look. "Farewell and thank you. Our hero, Lance Corporal Eddie Garvin. Your smile and your humor will be missed. Semper Fi.
