Resurrection

It's always a hassle to write when you're not sure what you want to write about - or even what the point of writing will be. Let's face it - as nice as it is to write project summaries in the hopes that someone will find your mistakes useful (while working in a good joke every now and again) it's more than a little egocentric to spend more than a little time writing about yourself or interests. I don't particularly enjoy the attention.

I do enjoy stories, though. I enjoy clever fixes and observations. I enjoy going about reading other people's stories and other people's cleverness.

Writing is a form of communication that maintains an individual's sense of position and relation in the extremely alienating experience of modern society. It's easy to let the formality of commerce and the politics of politeness distance us from the full-time realization that everybody shits. Everyone lives. Everyone fails. So, what better way to reinforce the realization that we're all highly-evolved plains apes monkeying along in this mess together than listening the sound of surprise in my father's voice as he gets up from the couch to find out that his catheter bag has filled up with mostly-clear urine in the short span of 2 hours, declaring, "I need to pee! My bladder's full!"

I worry, of course, that people will judge me by what I write - or worse - judge my writing by me. If I could, I'd make myself anonymous in order to circumvent the fear of judgement and my resulting defensive offensive. But that's a complete cop-out. There's a paper trail that identifies me. You know who I am - and if you don't... well, that doesn't matter.

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My father just underwent a radical prostatectomy to get around the problem of having aggressive prostate cancer. If you're curious about his fears, views, somewhat insane sense of humor and the current state of his Chief Justice John Roberts... his blog is over here. On my end, the situation isn't dramatic or sorrowful, but matter of fact. Vetting a doctor. Deciding on the procedure. Getting insurance approval. Scheduling the necessary vacation time. And in the beginning, it was very matter-of-fact for Mychael. But now, post-op, while my father is having his Come-to-Jesus moments facing his age and the effects of aging and surgical-induced infirmity on his pride and sense of masculinity (the effects of which, I hope are minimal - he's got nothing to worry about - one's identity isn't seated in the prostate or ovaries), I'm staring at the business end of the exit valve of a catheter bag horrified only by the prospect of getting the release wrong and accidentally spraying myself in the face with urine.

Sometimes I wonder if he's walking around the house with a forlorn look on his face to make me laugh, and then I try to empathize the feeling of having a catheter, liken it to the worst urinary tract infection of my life, and I cringe for how the old bastard is feeling. God - two weeks of a catheter! You can't really sympathize with situations like that without making the suffer way more self-conscious. So, I tell him I love him and try to make a dirty joke (funny enough to grin, but not so funny he has to laugh).

"Hey look! You can urinate on yuppie SUVs without risking indecent exposure!"

It's good to be home. It's even better to be human.

Deactivated Property

I was a teenage g0th once.

Then I was a 20-something g0th engineering student.

Moving allows a perfect opportunity to feature some truly Deactivated Property from the local Office -- like this gem from 04/11/2002. This was about two weeks before I had the epiphany during 6.111 that led me to really dig in and get good at applied engineering. I can't remember if this was during the semester where I couldn't sleep for more than 2 hours at a time. But what the time stamp proves that it was probably around the time I was repeatedly kicked out of lab (having repeatedly stayed past closing) and ended up crying because my analog accumulator still did not work.

Oh, MIT. What a horrible meat-grinder of a place. It took me three years to even approximate being well-rounded after graduation. In fact, I'm still not so much round as a shape of constant width, which is at least topologically interesting.

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"Here I am, yet again, writing on stolen paper with stolen pens -- It's as though all these moments of mine must be stolen, hidden from the course of my daily life. I have always heard that words were precious - but contraband?

I doubt my ability to ever achieve genius in this place. As it is I practically beg to be trodden upon and left destitute by the percussions of inadequacy that mask the passing of my days like a pulse, or a dirge.

We no longer talk in this place where we've found ourselves -- we commiserate, we condemn, but do we talk?

I have lost my tongue and my taste for more. I lick my lips and pray for silence, or for a point to somehow be made. But the point never comes!

'Why are we here?' I asked the machine --
'Because that's just the way of things,' it calmly replied.

Sleep, sleep, sleep, darkness, little brother to Death, the warm twins close to one another. Because that's just the way of things. Such a perceptive toy...

Maybe serendipity makes machines more perceptive than all of us."

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Green Porno

Isabella Rossellini is absolutely brilliant. I'd heard of her Green Porno project, but had never bothered to watch the shorts. Having corrected this oversight, I recommend you check out The Green Porno Website, and enjoy the excellent and frank use of language used therein - both in the shorts, and in the additional media. For example:

Here's a transcription of some of her dialog that I found particularly hilarious.

Exhibit A (season 1):

If I were a spider... I would have no penis. So I would have to press against my genital opening to collect sperms with my hand-like appendages - the palpae. I would approach the female very, very carefully. She is very, very big! And very, very aggressive. If I shake the web, she might think she caught a fly and eat me. When I'm close enough, I WOULD DIG MY PALPAE IN HER EPIGI AND RUN OFF!

Exhibit B (season 2):

Why vagina? Eggs are precious. Sperm are cheap. Sperm come by the millions, but not eggs. I might have 400 eggs. If I were a female, any female, I would want to protect my precious eggs. I would want to hide them in a hole, and I would want that hole to be in a place hard to reach... unless I want you to reach me.

Penises. Different penises. All trying to get as close as possible to my eggs. But. I would have a tunnel, and it would be a labyrinth, it would be intricate, it would be unique. It would be species-specific, so that I am not screwed by a bear. Penises. Species-specific. Each one unique to their respective vaginas. A cosy fit, like a hand in a glove. That's why I want my vagina.


And then there is the quiz - which lacks in graphic quality what the short films have in abundance, but the language is equally hilarious. I apparently have the Midas Touch.

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Everything you touch turns to gold, and it kind of creeps us out. You're completely calculating, but then, you also have a good heart, and are a really nice person. We'd judge, but you keep using your powers for good, not evil, and that's totally charming and sweet. Awww, look at you.

You're so bloody nice. It's like, we could curl up on your lap and feel safe, and drink cocoa and solve the world's problems through cuddling.That's your superpower: cuddles.

Separation of Church and State

I'm going to spin off a separate blog to talk about my project life... as opposed the insane conversations I get into with random strangers on the street.

Check out Reactivated Property Office.

Makeation

Happy Birthday, Mom!

I recently found myself killing time in NYC, which means a visit to the good folks over at Adafruit Industries. Cue dramatic voice over, "This time, it's not social." Limor had wrapped up the prototype for her Vacuum Florescent Display (VFD) clock, but was still in need of an enclosure. I was in need of something to do. Thus - over the weekend - I had a Makeation.

It began, as all things must, with an engineers' pad, some graphite, an eraser and some high-precision calipers.



After I was thoroughly sure of the dimensions (on paper), I started sketching up the pieces to cut on the laser cutter in Illustrator. No, it's not the right tool for CAD, but you can monkey around and get center-to-center drills if you sufficiently abuse some of the alignment and grouping features. And it worked well enough to yield a first-time-right design (although one that required exactly 0.125" acrylic).

Here's the front:



The back:



And the bottom:



The final kit won't be called 'iceb0x,' but I couldn't resist. It's only a prototype run so far, but the layout of Limor's board is clean and very compact. The VFD itself is also nice. You can see from the photos that the color is a cool aqua, that's a nice contrast to the warmer tones of the highly-fetishized Nixie tubes. The other upside(s) to using a VFD over a Nixie is that it's multi-digit, not nearly so rare, and it runs at a significantly lower voltage. A VFD takes less than 40V as compared to Nixie tubes, which need 80V to 100V. I know that voltage is cool (it's current that kills) but why use a BEEFY transformer when a cute SMT core will do?

Another nice detail of the clock is that Limor has the VFD mounted on a daughter board via a right-angle header so that the tube "floats" above the PCB. That made for the trickiest part of the enclosure design -- placing the "nipple" drill in the North face that keeps the tube in place. It worked on the first pass, but I admit to tweaking it so that the tube was perfectly parallel to the PCB. There's less than 1/16" of wiggle room in the long dimension in this version of the case. I'm especially proud of the fact that it's fully-interlocking on 5 of 6 faces (the top being held on by compression from two nuts) and assembled using 6 x 4-40 screws.

If you're psyched about the VFD clock design, and can't wait for the Adafruit Industries kit to come out - it's the sort of project that's been multi-sourced by rsw and Make Blog, among others.