_
respond?
04:03:18 PM, Sunday 6 July 2008

-

_
respond?
04:02:48 PM, Sunday 6 July 2008

-

_
respond?
04:02:21 PM, Sunday 6 July 2008

-

once there were parking lots
now it's a peaceful oasis
(you got it, you got it) _
respond? (1)
03:58:20 PM, Sunday 6 July 2008

-

Proceedings of the Mad Science Society, Vol. 1, Table 1: An Observational Study of the Mentos/Coke effect

Object	Liquid	Delivery Mechanism	Effect
Mento	Diet Coke	Small, open	3/4 of bottle fizzed out
Mento	Club soda	Small, open	Fizzes well, but does not release so much liquid. Also note: pH testing revealed that club soda is acidic enough to kill fish both before and after a mento is dropped in it.
Mento	Diet Coke	Mento taped into cap, hole drilled into cap.	exciting explosion
Ground mento	Diet Coke	Mento taped into cap, hole drilled into cap.	not as impressive as regular mento/diet coke, but better than the club soda.
red hots	Diet Coke	Hole in lid procedure.	pretty good fizz, slow to start, not as good as mentos (note: red hots smoother than mentos).
Sour gummi bears	Diet Coke	Hole in lid procedure	very impressive fizz, only 1/4 of liquid expelled.
Mento	Diet Coke	Open cup	very little fizz
Mento	Regular Coke	Hole in lid	just as good as diet coke.
3 mento shells (hand peeled: )	Diet Coke	Hole in lid, medium size bottle.	Big explosion, 2/3 liquid loss.
Nerds	Diet Coke	Hole in lid.	Delivery flawed, but good reaction
Mento	Vinegar	Cup	no reaction
baking soda	flat Coke	small bottle	small reaction
baking soda	non-flat Coke	small bottle	same as flat
baking soda	vinegar	bottle	medium reaction, not as good as mentos.
multiple mentos	diet coke	add coke to mentos	not terribly exciting
many altoids	diet coke	hole in lid.	small fizz, slow and steady. altoids bob. when shaken, impressive fizz.
ground nerds	diet coke	blown into top through straw	very good fizz
tic-tacs	diet coke	hole in lid.	hardly any fizz
ground altoids	diet coke	hole in lid	?? (no notes)
shaved mento	diet coke	hole in lid	slight reaction
grand finale: mentos	diet coke	2 liter bottle, hole in lid	not disappointing!

This table is by no means exhaustive. Pictures by Julia, notes by Erika, explosives handling by just about everyone. _
respond? (4)
10:06:37 PM, Friday 4 July 2008

-

Happy 4th! Make sure to try writing in the sky. _
respond? (6)
11:53:50 AM, Friday 4 July 2008

-

Back his run as amoeba. _
respond? (4)
09:45:27 PM, Sunday 29 June 2008

-

_
respond?
10:06:47 PM, Thursday 26 June 2008

-

Where the flowers are. Finally. _
respond? (1)
10:06:18 PM, Thursday 26 June 2008

-

Hm, it is becoming apparent that in order to really do comet without stepping on anyone's toes I will need to run my own virtual private server. The gap between demo and beta is ever-widening. _
respond? (1)
07:57:24 PM, Wednesday 25 June 2008

-

I have this dippy little tune in my head. I have had it in my head for about a week. It's not a real song or anything. It just keeps going. _
respond?
06:28:53 PM, Monday 23 June 2008

-

I've been checking out google's new app engine thingum. It's pretty cool in some ways, but not good for what I ended up wanting to do, which is real-time interactive web applications. Since you just get one thread on the server (at least on the dev version, I assume on the live version as well), it lacks support for reverse ajax/comet. That means no gmail-chat type stuff. There are apparently real time chat applications written for it, but some of them apologize for the lag, and some of them have a separate comet server. So, free webhosting + nice framework = cool, and it might be very good for some things, but there are times when it's better to have more control.

Comet is not rocket science, as it turns out. It is quite easy to sit on one http request (say for receiving chats) until another (say for sending a chat) comes in. It's possible to keep the first request open while still returning stuff to the browser, which would be nicer to the server and maybe a little faster, but unfortunately is not supported in IE, as far as I can tell. In any case, there's not much one can do about latency. As the author of the linked article points out, if you assume near-speed-of-light travel, the theoretical limit for getting information across the country and back is around 40ms. Right now I'm getting about 100ms between here and my web host somewhere off in the southwest, which is less than three times the theoretical limit. Unfortunately 100ms is a lot when you're talking about keeping an animation in sync. Which I suppose is why internet based interactive juggling is not a thing. But it will be! Getting things synchronized after a user tosses a ball is not the problem, computers are nice and fast and predictable, it's doing so in a way that doesn't appear jumpy to the other user that's difficult. At Tim's suggestion I played around with just not synchronizing at all. It's interesting, there's no jumpiness and you do get a sense of interacting with someone, even if you don't actually have a world in common.

Anyway, that's what I've been up to. Nothing to look at yet, unfortunately, I'll let you all know when there is. _
respond?
05:02:34 PM, Sunday 22 June 2008

-

The meeting was dull, but the rug was fascinating. I mean it was just any old Persian rug, and slightly shabby, but staring at it for an hour, my eye danced around and found symmetry everywhere, and wanted to be dragged into a dark knot at the center, but was prevented by the proximity of someone's feet. _
respond?
09:32:28 PM, Thursday 5 June 2008

-

_
respond?
06:22:21 PM, Thursday 5 June 2008

-

I hope my brain likes this whole coding thing because it's going to have to do it all day tomorrow too. _
respond?
09:35:20 PM, Wednesday 4 June 2008

-

Here's a nice article about East Coker. Four Quartets comes in and out of focus for me. A few months ago I was up in the middle of the night and needed to read it, right then, nothing else would do-- nothing else did do, until I found it. Since then I've tried to keep my copy somewhere easy to find. _
respond?
10:10:52 PM, Tuesday 3 June 2008

-

Sometimes when editing documents I go to great lengths to save letters and numbers, as if they were some sort of precious resource. _
respond?
09:45:23 PM, Tuesday 3 June 2008

-

Thought while sleepy: a wooden armadillo, painted white, climbing stairs. (sometimes I don't get you, brain, I really don't). _
respond?
07:25:26 AM, Monday 2 June 2008

-

_
respond?
11:48:50 AM, Sunday 1 June 2008

-

gorilla etiquette (via frizzy logic) _
respond?
10:39:45 AM, Sunday 1 June 2008

-

_
respond?
04:04:45 PM, Saturday 31 May 2008

-

_
respond?
04:03:44 PM, Saturday 31 May 2008

-

(true story)

I left the red rock
down by the dam they built.
that evening, the crickets were loud.
the next day, it was gone.
_
respond?
11:18:53 PM, Friday 30 May 2008

-

a small sea song

here it is, my head full of pebbles
scraping each other in the surf.
nothing delicate here.

this is not the summary.
this is not old wood buried in sand,
and what that means.

the sand, not distant, the sea, close
combs at my face.

at the gallery we are told
he paints the sea every day.
we understand, implicitly
and approve of this devotion.
_
respond?
10:53:57 PM, Friday 30 May 2008

-

In lieu of a political diatribe, here are some nice snowflakes. _
respond? (5)
07:27:47 AM, Friday 30 May 2008

-

This probably won't make much sense unless you've been watching too much Jeeves and Wooster. This is what happens when I am left to my own devices.

_
respond? (3)
10:52:41 PM, Thursday 29 May 2008

-

Kayaking tonight, we saw a goose sitting quite puffed up on the shore. Tim said goslings, I said naw, not enough room for goslings. As we approached another goose swam up to the shore, neck completely horizontal so his head was in the water. Odd. It got up on shore and started hissing. That made the gosling hypothesis more compelling. Just as we were turning around, the mother stood up and out popped six fluffy goslings from under her wings and waddled away. It was severely cute. _
respond? (1)
09:32:40 PM, Wednesday 28 May 2008

-

knitting in glass _
respond? (2)
06:57:19 AM, Wednesday 28 May 2008

-

meadow

purple, blue
dots and dots and dots
float in green.

dirt last year
dirt and large machines
now meadow.
_
respond?
09:04:49 PM, Tuesday 27 May 2008

-

A large branch cracked and fell right at my feet as I was sitting on a park bench today. Also, excellent thunderstorm, conveniently placed in the midafternoon, so I got home dry. _
respond?
05:58:51 PM, Tuesday 27 May 2008

-

Peas! Such fond memories of the pea plants we had on our porch garden in Providence. They amounted to about two dozen peas, but they were wonderful. Maybe I do need a garden. _
respond? (1)
07:46:14 AM, Tuesday 27 May 2008

-

_
respond? (2)
08:27:37 PM, Monday 26 May 2008

-

_
respond?
08:27:24 PM, Monday 26 May 2008

-

_
respond?
08:03:12 PM, Monday 26 May 2008

-

Speaking of ocean, this is nice. _
respond? (1)
05:02:35 PM, Sunday 25 May 2008

-

solidity. to hold this against that.
the chair that could scrape against the floor.
chaos. cobwebs. clutter.
need a smoother surface.

the object is in the subject and the subject is in the object:
meaningless. small objects, scattered, chores to be done.
a smooth sheet of objects and I am in them.
also, I am watching. with modest aims.
_
respond?
04:54:29 PM, Sunday 25 May 2008

-

older entries

site & script courtesy of Moss